Back in February, we mentioned that the lack of a campaign website is detrimental to those serious about campaigning – even for a county position. Jim Johnson hunted down those county commission and school board candidates that do have websites:
Four school board candidates have websites, while 12 BOCC candidates now have at least some kind of website. Eight wanna-be commissioners have no web presence that we know of, including both candidates for District 7 – Thomas Scott v. Mark Sharpe.
Will you use candidates own websites to help make your decision?
John
3 years ago
I think these internets scare the bejesus out of certain candidates. Especially after they heard a rumor from those fancy fangled interwebs that there are snakes on a plane.
jason
3 years ago
I think they are looking at people like howard dean who proved that a strong web presence does not mean a nessesarily strong solid base of support. I cannot offhand think of a candidate who has effectively used a web presence to raise large amounts of money or sway opinion, at least of the general voting public. I think web-campaigning is like web advertising, you have to put out a lot of crap to get a little response. For a political candidate the cost and potential downside of a bad website, where mistakes can be memorialized for use by the competition, are perhaps a little scary for some.
Jim Johnson
3 years ago
I think the reason more candidates don’t have websites is that they are not sure, yet, how to really use them. To be sure, candidate websites can not be the only mechanism used to communicate with the voters. However, they can be very useful.
First, while not a major source of fund raising, they can help raise contributions. Even if on-line donations represent 10% of the total, that can be a substantial amount. It’s also a decent way to offer a benefit for donating: credit card miles. Lastly, candidates can use websites for ‘last minute’ or ‘rapid response’ donation strategies.
Second, consider that most candidates use direct mail to communicate their message. How much information can you really put onto a flyer? For some voters, that is all they need – some need even less – but many voters would like to know more. A website is a place to provide voters with greater detail about background and issues.
Finally, I understand that anything posted on the Internet can be used by those who oppose you. But so can direct mail pieces, quotes in the newspaper, or even the voting records of elected officials. Public records can be used for opposition research, from traffic tickets to divorce filings. At least with the web, candidates have control over what is displayed.
Hopefully, by 2008 most candidates will realize that the Internet can be a significant tool to communicate with the website.
Jim Johnson
3 years ago
Sorry… I hit submit too soon. My last comment should end:
Hopefully, by 2008 most candidates will realize that the Internet can be a significant tool to communicate with the voters.
Smitty
3 years ago
Actually I think you’ve misread the Howard Dean story. Dean used the internet to raise huge amounts of money (for himself; he hasn’t done so for the party) and create a massive upsurge in support that, frankly, nobody had predicted. Dean should not have done as well as he did and what success he did have came from his adept use of the internet. More candidates should be looking to the Dean model, not fewer. The problem is, as it has always been on the net, things that look or sound cool on line often are not in reality. Dean is not the crazy person he was made out to be, but neither was he really ready for the big show. Picking a candidate from the ‘net is like picking your spouse off of Yahoo Personals. Maybe 1 in 10000 will be any good. Howard Dean wasn’t that one.
The thing is, though, candidates should not look at Dean and say, see, I don’t want to use the net. They should look at Howard Dean, look at the amount of money he raised and the name recognition he got, and then delude themselves into thinking that they are not lunatics and thus can actually make the leap from the ‘net roots to the voting booth. It can be done; but probably not with the crop of *ahem* “candidates” we have running for local office. Am I surprised Tom Scott and Mark Sharpe aren’t on line? No. What could they possibly have to say for themselves? They are both well aware that voters are going to make a choice in that race based on which man they hate less; so the quieter they stay the better.
That said, these lazy bums with no web presence are doing a severe disservice to people like me, who are planning to vote but happen to be working thousands of miles away from Tampa and who are going to rely on the internet for all of our information about our candidates. Why, it’s damn near unpatriotic not to have a web page for your campaign. I could write a letter to the paper today saying that I think it’s proof that these local candidates don’t support the troops, if they’re not doing everything they can to get information out to the troops who want to vote this fall.
Hmm. That actually sounds like fun. I think I’ll do that.
Jim Johnson
3 years ago
The Sarasota Herald Tribune has a good story about candidates’ use of websites:
http://www.heraldtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060726/NEWS/607260370
John
3 years ago
Smitty, Dean’s raised more money as DNC Chair through the internet than Terry McAulfie did during his tenure as DNC Chairmen. Is it the same as the amounts of cash as he was raising while running for president? No, but when someone is running for president there is more of a sense of urgency in campaigning and fundraising.
There is more to the Internet than just the CAMPAIGNS websites. There has got to be a word of mouth / activist involvement with things or they go nowhere. If Dean didn’t have bloggers like Jerome Armstrong and Markos (the KOS in dailykos.com) plugging away about him – no one would have jumped on as they did. You’re not going to see a huge activist response to local campaigns, nor has there been much of an activist response online to local federal elections (Samm Simpson is struggling to understand the Internet while Phyllis Busansky’s activism is focused offline). But then again, when a candidate doesn’t imbrace the Internet, there isn’t much inspiration for web activism from activists… Catch-22.