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Almost 50 years after the famous Kennedy-Nixon TV debate opened a new arena for political campaigns, candidates like Sen. Susan Collins and Rep. Tom Allen are learning they need to be savvy about a new, vastly different medium – the Internet.
The Internet is remaking campaign landscapes, and as with TV, candidates who develop strategies unique to it will reap more from it, political observers say.
The U.S. Senate race between incumbent Republican Collins and Democratic challenger Allen, destined to be the most expensive race for federal office in Maine history and one which already is a target of national partisan resources, has both candidates actively using Internet campaigning.
The Collins camp hired Lance Dutson of Searsmont, a conservative whose MaineWebReport.com blog site has stirred the pot on state issues. Dutson is working at revamping the Collins Web site, and he will blog – writing regularly online – for and about Collins.
Allen’s campaign has hired Mike Nutter to serve as a resource for bloggers, providing those opinion writers already favorably disposed to the Democratic point of view with information about Allen.
With each campaign devoting staff to Web work this early in the election cycle, it’s clear there is much at stake. The Web may not supplant TV ads for reaching numbers of people this time around, but its ability to get to targeted groups far exceeds TV’s.
Larry Sabato, director of the nonpartisan Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, said that while Republicans took the lead in direct mail campaigning and dominate talk radio, Democrats got out in front on the Web.
MoveOn.org, a liberal site, in 2002 broke new ground by raising $1 million in 24 hours for its causes, and Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean became a front-runner in 2003 in large part because of his Web presence. The blogging phenomenon continues to reflect this Democratic dominance.
“Democrats have a big lead in the blogging community,” Sabato said in a telephone interview last week, with more sites and more contributing members.
But Sabato doesn’t expect that lead to hold.
“Mobilization begets counter-mobilization,” he said.
Dutson, a Web site developer who has been on the front lines of blogging and other online tools for several years, said the Web allows campaigns far more personal contact with voters.
“The goal is to touch more people,” he said. “We’re anxious to humanize the campaign as much as possible.” And using the Web is a natural fit for Maine, Dutson believes, because of the state’s rural nature.
Valerie Martin, Allen’s campaign manager, said much of the Web strategy is about creating “buzz and energy surrounding a campaign.” But Allen also is excited about doing “live blogging,” responding to e-mailed questions as they are submitted to his Web site, she said.
“That is truly a forum to learn about Tom, who he is as a person and on the issues. It’s making him much more reachable to voters,” Martin said.
The Collins campaign will offer a similar forum.
But the Web’s potential for campaigns goes further.
. Candidates can create video messages, posted on their Web sites or on the popular FaceBook and YouTube sites addressing particular issues or even a region of the state. And video can be updated easily.
. Bloggers writing favorably about a candidate can bring a more nuanced understanding of a candidate’s position on the issues. And bloggers who disagree with a candidate’s position can call attention to weaknesses, so the online community serves as a focus group.
. Signing up people for e-mailed updates or registering them to post on a candidate-themed blog can help campaigns to gather e-mail addresses that are useful for fundraising and for getting supporters to attend rallies, write letters to the editor and urge friends to vote for the candidate.
In the recent spat between the Collins and Allen camps over the use of a video tracker following Collins, both campaigns posted videos of the incident in question for voters to see for themselves, illustrating how the Web will be used.
The voter-to-voter contact – perhaps forwarding by e-mail to a friend a video link of a candidate talking about a pet issue – is far more effective than TV ads, said David Weinberger, a research fellow at Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society. Weinberger, who advised Dean on Web matters during the former Vermont governor’s 2004 presidential campaign, believes the Web could end the era of sound bites.
“Political campaigning has become the worst form of marketing,” Weinberger said in an e-mail response to questions.
“The aim has become to keep the candidates from saying anything ‘risky.’ It’s all about staying safely on message and repeating that message over and over. This may have been effective in the age of broadcasting. [But] we don’t want to hear messages designed for faceless masses. We want to hear from the candidate herself or himself, unscripted. What works in the mass media is alienating in the highly personal medium of the Web.”
Strategists have coined a term for the political potential of the Web, combining “Internet” with “grassroots” to create the word “netroots.”
And it’s within reach of all campaigns, perhaps soon to be seen in legislative and even municipal elections.
“It’s such low cost,” Sabato said.
The blogging phenomenon, one wrinkle to the online political world, is a growing forum.
“Blog readership is on a massive incline,” Dutson said. The biggest demographic of blog readers is 40-to-50-year-old males, he said.
But as Richard Nixon famously learned by failing to appreciate that he looked like a shady used-car salesman on TV, the Internet is also fraught with potential pitfalls for candidates.
Dutson, in one of his postings, referred to the liberal opinion site firedoglake.com as a “foul-mouthed fem-blog.” That drew the ire of the left, who called for Collins to fire Dutson for using what they saw as sexist terms. Dutson counters by pointing to the Chicago Tribune’s feminist blog, which the newspaper labels a “fem-blog.”
And those from the Republican side have criticized Allen for some supporters’ posts included on his MySpace page.
Weinberger argued the Web’s potential gains outweigh its risks for a candidate, “although the risks are real. Campaigns will seize on whatever they can to make their opponent look bad, including quoting a blogger as if anything she ever posted represents the campaign.”
But he believes “as blogging becomes more mainstream, I think we’ll develop a greater sense of forgiveness and flexibility.”
Sabato is less optimistic.
“Politics is nasty enough,” he said, and anonymous posting “allows cowards to spread highly negative, sometimes outrageously false information.”
Weinberger sees blogging as more than partisan preaching to the choir.
“Sure minds are changed by blogs,” he wrote in answer to a reporter’s question. “Supporters’ minds are changed by learning more about their candidates and thinking through their ideas together in public.”
Sabato offers a more sardonic view of online political debate: “Can’t live with them, can’t live without them.”
Politics on the Web:
On the right: AsMaineGoes.com
On the left: TurnMaineBlue.com
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