A West Des Moines City Council candidate took down her campaign website Oct. 7 after it became apparent the site had repeated several statements word-for-word from a former state senator’s campaign website.
The Des Moines Register presented Jennie Doke-Kerns, one of two candidates to represent the First Ward in West Des Moines, with the language apparently duplicated from former state Sen. Nate Boulton’s now-defunct Senate campaign website. Doke-Kerns said had she realized the words were verbatim from another campaign, she would not have signed off on them.
“I overlooked it,” Doke-Kerns said in an interview. She said she did not know about the issue until the Register told her about it Tuesday.
“As an educator who is constantly working to help students learn to avoid plagiarism and write ethically, this is troubling to me. I worked with a friend to talk through issues that were important to me, and he created the language for the website. I was unaware that the same language had been used elsewhere,” she later said in an emailed statement to the Register.
Three paragraphs on Doke-Kerns’ stances on public education funding, workers’ rights, infrastructure improvements and support for first responders were the exact same as Boulton’s website, according to a version found on the Wayback Machine.
One statement touted that she “introduced Iowa’s first comprehensive paid family leave legislation,” though Doke-Kerns has not been a state legislator.
Doke-Kerns said the designer was a friend who is listed on an online biography as the chief growth officer and vice president of a West Des Moines-based marketing firm. He did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Doke-Kerns said she was sorry and she would take down the site while she worked to change the language. The Register confirmed it had been taken offline as of late Tuesday morning.
Doke-Kerns said the same person also designed Boulton’s website.
Boulton, a Democrat who lost in November 2024 in the Iowa Senate District 20 race to Republican challenger Mike Pike, now has a campaign website for Iowa House District 39 to represent areas including east Des Moines and Pleasant Hill. That website does not include the paragraphs.
Boulton told the Register on Tuesday evening that while he had not yet spoken with Doke-Kerns or the website designer, Doke-Kerns had called him to apologize.
“Errors happen in campaigns,” he said, adding Doke-Kerns recognized this was a mistake. Boulton said he did not know of the issue until Tuesday.
Web searches using Google and Grammarly did not reveal any of the language from Boulton’s former site had been duplicated on other active websites.
Doke-Kerns is running against incumbent First Ward council representative Kevin Trevillyan.
Phillip Sitter covers the suburbs for the Des Moines Register. Phillip can be reached via email at psitter@gannett.com. Find out more about him online in the Register’s staff directory.
This story was updated to add more information.
This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: West Des Moines candidate takes down campaign website copied from former state senator’s
Reporting by Phillip Sitter, Des Moines Register / Des Moines Register
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