After several allegations by Warren County Judge-Executive Mike Buchanon’s campaign that his Democratic opponent, Harold Brantley, has made several underhanded moves in this year’s race, Brantley’s campaign responded Wednesday with an ad accusing Buchanon’s campaign of pulling a dirty trick in January.

When Brantley campaign workers sought to register an Internet domain name for a campaign Web site, they found several – haroldbrantley.com, haroldbrantley.net and haroldbrantleyforjudge.com – were already owned, said his campaign manager, Brandy Moore.

The buyer: Pam Cosby, Buchanon’s sister and campaign treasurer, on behalf of Buchanon Properties. Typing in those Web addresses now leads to a barrage of unrelated pop-up ads and a &#8220coming soon” message from domain-name registration firm Register.com.

But Cosby said this morning that no political malice was intended; she expected a laugh from Buchanon.

&#8220That was a joke,” she said. &#8220He had me looking online to see about me getting him some domain names. Of course, he didn’t think it was funny when he saw what I’d purchased.”

Cosby bought the Brantley names, along with Buchanon’s current campaign address, www.mikebuchanon.com, for about $20 apiece, she said. At that time, she saw no harm since Brantley hadn’t filed to run against her brother. Brantley also ran against Buchanon in 2002.

Cosby bought the Web addresses Jan. 14. Brantley had not yet filed for office then – the deadline was Jan. 31 – but he had said as early as October 2005 that he was considering running again.

Buchanon also said this morning by e-mail that the domain-name purchase wasn’t an official campaign act and had no political motive.

&#8220This was intended as a practical joke on me, and some were the ones that his ad named,” he wrote. &#8220She was originally intending to acquire the ‘Buchanon.com’ domain for me. But that domain was already taken by someone else. While searching through the registration Web site, she found that you could reserve any Web address you wanted at a very small purchase price.”

Buchanon said that until he saw Brantley’s advertisement, he had thought no more about it and didn’t even realize the names were still reserved.

&#8220If he wants a Web site, and would like any one of those, we would be happy to GIVE one of these to him,” Buchanon wrote.

Brantley wound up with the address www.brantleyforjudgeexec.com, but Moore called the Buchanon campaign’s action &#8220borderline illegal, mostly unethical.”

She said the purchase of a rival’s name might violate a 1990s federal law banning the purchase of domain names &#8220to cause harm, malice or deceit,” though that law dealt primarily with people buying up domain names – such as the names of major companies – then trying to sell those back to the companies for large sums.

Moore said, however, that the Brantley campaign does not plan on filing any sort of formal election-law complaint about the domain-name purchase.

&#8220That’s not our big issue,” she said. &#8220The big thing is, we just thought it was unethical to do.”

The Brantley campaign has bought no Internet addresses besides its official Web site, Moore said.

Buying up Internet addresses in other candidates’ names has been practiced for almost a decade, perhaps most notably in 1998 by the satirical Web site GWBush.com. It remained active for several years, despite attempts by future president George W. Bush’s campaign to have it shut down.