On The Download: The Age Of The E-Announcement
Welcome back to On The Download, your almost-daily dispatch on politechs: Politics, Multimedia and the Internet. If you have tips, comments, or suggestions, email us.
Is this the dawning of the Presidential e-Announcement? Are candidates picking the unpredictable (and debatably unquantifiable) internet audience over traditional Nielsen ratings? Will this crop of Presidential candidates choose to declare their intentions on their own Web site instead of Meet The Press? Recent events show this might be the case.
John Edwards told viewers on The Daily Show last month to watch his Web site for an announcement. John McCain referred prospective voters to his opening speech on ExploreMcCain.com. And Tom Vilsack had his announcement on his launch site weeks before his official opening tour this week.
Vilsack Internet Director Kevin Thurman says his camp was the first to do the e-announcement. He points out that the first video blog entry was up at 12:01AM on November 9, 2006. A few hours later, the morning news cycle reported Vilsack's announcement that he was running for President.
There's something else interesting about Vilsack's site. The Iowa Governer forgoes many of the frills and instead links to existing social networking sites like YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, DNC's Party Builder and Linked In. Blue State Digital does the online strategy for TomVilsack08.com with Thurman, a former BSD staffer himself, on the campaign side joined by former Heartland PAC internet staffer Scott Zumwalt as deputy Internet Director. Former Kaine for Governor Internet Director John Rohrbach is also consulting the e-team.
The e-announcement is certainly not for every candidate. Declaring one's candidacy online benefits an outsider and someone with an existing online community. Edwards, Clark, Kerry (at least his e-mail list) and on the Republican side, Giuliani, might be likely candidates for this strategy.
In related news, Sam Brownback was up and running this morning in lieu of his announcement that he's formed an exploratory committee. His bare bones Web site is the same URL used for his Senate campaigns. The site's donations page is handled by Aristotle, the bi-partisan firm that hosts the CampaignContribution.com software. [SHIRA TOEPLITZ].
Some Bytes:
*The unofficial Iowa for Edwards launched today.
*The Republican answer to lefty netroots fundraising, ABCPAC.com, put up its own draft funds for presidential candidates last week. The only candidates with double digits ($36 and $25 respectively) are Giuliani and Rice. ActBlue has donation pages posted for Dem candidates.
*Some Democratic Presidential hopefuls have draft campaigns on DNC's Party Builder. Notably, three of the "largest" groups on the site are "Edwards 2008" (100 members), "Barack Obama Supporters" (80 members) and "Clark for President" (79 members). Sure, they're not Facebook-sized numbers, but anyone who belongs to Party Builder is prime suspect to become a campaign activist or volunteer.
*The second quarter of 2006 Congressional Salary Data is available at Legistorm.com.