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 w

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