Oxnard's very own 'Joe [Lara] the Plumber.'

With the election settled and the dust clearing, there seems to be one loose end to tie up, at least as far as “Joe the Plumber” is concerned. Forget about the unlicensed guy made famous by the candidates during the campaign. We’re talking about the real “Joe the Plumber,” or at least one of many real “Joe the Plumbers” in the U.S. 
   This one’s Joe Lara, owner of “Joe the Plumber” in Oxnard, Calif. Lara said his business has been “Joe the Plumber” since January, 2007 and the current brouhaha over the name has garnered him a fair share of national attention recently, admittedly as a case of mistaken identity. 
   “More than 200,000 people have visited my Web site since Oct 16, the day after the third presidential debate,” Lara said. “Everyone assumes I am the fellow from Ohio. I have been on TV five times, radio three times, and there have been two front page stories in the newspaper and countless phone calls and e-mails from people all over the world.”
   After working as a plumber for various contractors since 1990, Lara decided to strike out on his own, launching his one-man operation in January of 2007. He got his license under the “Joe the Plumber” name in May of that year. An attempt to launch a Web page with the “Joe the Plumber” domain revealed it was already owned, but available for $5,000.
   “Since money was tight starting out, I opted to insert my last name in the domain name,” Lara said. “So it was secured as joelaraheplumber.com.”
   In addition to all the local attention given to “Joe the Plumber,” Lara said he received media calls from as far away as Philadelphia and Canada, with most of the reporters wanting to know his views on the candidates and, “issues ranging from global warming to the stock market fiasco,” Lara said. “And, most importantly, how it has affected me by being confused with the other ‘Joe the Plumber’.”
   Once the news that Joe Wurzelbacher—the Ohio “Joe the Plumber” who enjoyed his 15 minutes of fame during the 2008 presidential campaign—being unlicensed broke, though, Lara said he had some ‘splainin’ to do: “Even my regular customers were calling to ask me if it was true that I didn’t have a license,” he said. “I said it was the guy in Ohio who was unlicensed not me—I had to fax dozens of copies of my contractor license to people all over Ventura County.”
   Celebrity may have an unintended consequence for Oxnard’s “Joe the Plumber.” Lara said, even though he’s been doing business under that name for a substantial amount of time, it has been brought to his attention several enterprising individuals have applied to trademark the name. Lara said if any of those people receive a trademark he wouldn’t be able to operate as Joe the Plumber any longer, “even though I have had the name for almost two years prior to all this craziness.”