CJ and Charlie.jpg

Charlie Rainwater, left, and CJ Phillips are two high-tech workers from Washington County who have their own plans for a domain name -- JebBushforpresident.com -- that they happen to own.

You might say that CJ Phillips and Charlie Rainwater, a gay couple from rural Washington County, own a piece of the developing Republican presidential campaign of former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.

Years ago, the two bought the domain name for one of the likeliest web addresses that the Bush team might want -- JebBushforpresident.com -- and say they plan to use it to talk about same-sex marriage and other issues affecting gays.

"We thought, 'wouldn't it be awesome for people looking for Jeb Bush to learn about LGBTQ issues whether they liked it or not,'" said Phillips, who lives with Rainwater near Forest Grove.

It's not uncommon for political operatives -- and entrepreneurs looking to make some quick cash -- to jostle over domain names featuring candidates for office.

Phillips, 46, and Rainwater, 62, are self-described "high-tech bears" who work for a major electronics company (which they'd rather not identify) and have a fondness for snapping up interesting domain names.

They say they bought the Jeb Bush domain name shortly after the 2008 election, when the Bush name wasn't exactly in the ascendancy as President George W. Bush was leaving the presidency with low approval ratings.

But the two weren't ready to write off the Bush dynasty. Phillips said the two were also looking for potential platforms to write about issues affecting gays. They were living in Texas at the time and were irked by a bill in that state's legislature that they feared would affect contracts they had written giving each other some of the legal protections married couples have.

They didn't do much with the domain name until Bush announced late last year that he would launch an exploratory campaign for president. Now they're working on a website that pokes Bush for criticizing equal protections for gays back in 1994. Bush continues to oppose same-sex marriage but has recently said that gay couples should not be discriminated against.

"We've never met Gov. Bush," said Phillips. "He might be a nice man. (The domain name) is really just a hook and it gets us more exposure."

The two have been together for 18 years and say one of the things they're most interested in getting across is that gay couples spend most of their time thinking about the same things that straight couples do. Such as, Phillips said, "Are we managing our money right? Did we get the garbage out?"

The two said they aren't interested in selling the site to Bush, although Rainwater said "we're going to be kind of torn about it" if the Bush campaign did offer a large sum of money. They said it's probably more likely that there might be an attempt to wrest it away by legal means. They said they've already been offered free legal help if it comes to that.

So far, they haven't heard anything from the Jeb Bush camp. Bush's leadership political action committee -- The Right to Rise PAC -- did not respond to an emailed request for comment.

Rainwater and Phillips have already received extensive publicity on a number of national websites. Business Insider was the first to report on the two.

--Jeff Mapes

503-221-8209

@Jeffmapes