Is The Kindle The Next Big Thing In Grassroots Politics?

MT Cong. challenger Tyler Gernant (D) raised the bar just a bit higher for technologically savvy campaigning this week when he became (his camp says) the first candidate to offer campaign materials on the Amazon Kindle.

The Kindle, often billed as the "iPod of books," is the wireless e-book reader tasked with saving the American newspaper and destroying the American publishing industry. And now, according to Gernant, it could make its mark on American politics as well.

"A lot of people have asked me, you know, 'why are you doing this?'" he said in an interview. "But then again, a lot of people said that about websites, too. Our thought was, if we do this, we have a chance at people engaging."

For 99 cents, Kindle users can download Gernant's policy position papers to their devices the same way they would any other book. The price is "the lowest Amazon would let us charge," said campaign media consultant Daren Berringer. The vast majority of the price goes to the web retailer, and the 34 cents the campaign gets for each copy sold will be used by the camapaign to plant trees in Montana.

"We've got a separate account just for this," Berringer said. "The money's not going to the campaign."

That's assuming there's some money to worry about, of course. Both men agreed asking people to pay a dollar for campaign literature could be something of a barrier to the strategy's wild success.

"We totally understood we're asking people to buy Tyler's position papers," Berringer said. "We had to really work through the steps to make people feel good about this. That's where we came up with idea of planting trees."

"We're saying 'thanks for downloading the paper and paying the 99 cents'," he added. "[When you know what the money is for planting trees,] we're hoping you're going to feel good about that."

Like any modern campaign, Gernant's has a website, a blog, a Twitter feed and a Facebook account. And, of course, the position papers are available for free online, too. Gernant says adding Kindle to the mix isn't meant to replace those digital grassroots tools, but rather create yet another way of accessing the campaign.

"This is not the end all and be all of campaigning," he said. "We're just looking for new ways to engage people."

There are unique qualities to the Kindle that could make this idea stick, though. Berringer said he first got the idea to make the campaign materials available for the device when he saw "a woman like my mother's age" reading one on an airplane. "It dawned on me that it wasn't just the kids using it," he said. "This allows us to aim our outreach through technology to a whole new age group."

One group has already heralded the decision to offer the e-book, Gernant said. "The association of the blind encourages people to use the Kindle because of it's text-to-speech feature," he said, referring to an option on the device that will read aloud what's on the page. "That wasn't in our initial factoring."

There's a potential for more traditional grassroots benefits to the Kindle, too. Down the line, Gernant said, the campaign is considering equiping field staff with the devices to make it easier for them to have the policy positions available at grassroots events. Plus, the gee-whiz factor may be enough to turn a few heads, Berringer said. "I think it puts more of an emphasis on looking at our policy papers," he said. "Because we're using this as a tool, we've piqued interest in reading them."

Gernant's policy papers have only been available for the Kindle since 5/11 -- and Amazon is notoriously stingy with hard data about Kindle sales -- so it's impossible to know at this point to know how many, if any, of Gernant's ebooks have sold or even how many people in MT have the device necessary to read one. But Gernant said he's confident Kindles will become yet another virtual platform for campaigning in the future.

"They're definitely moving in the iPod direction," he said. "Pretty soon, they're going to be everywhere."

(EVAN McMORRIS-SANTORO)