Between Barack and a Hard Place

When I heard about the difficulties facing the Obama Campaign and their MySpace page it reminded me of an article I read last cycle about Phil Angelides and HIS MySpace page.

“Phil Angelides, California’s Democratic candidate for governor, had nothing to do with creating a MySpace page under his name. His teenage daughter was the first to point out his presence on the popular online hangout.

But rather than kill a volunteer’s unauthorized efforts, the campaign has embraced the youth-heavy site, using Angelides’ personal profile page to post position papers and other announcements. It also scans the comments section to gauge what’s on youths’ minds, turning it into an informal focus group.

“We’ve come to embrace it as our own,” campaign spokesman Brian Brokaw said. “It can help you reach an audience that otherwise might be more difficult to reach. Not as many young voters watch the evening news.”USA Today

Similarly, Phil’s fellow California candidate and now Secretary of State of California Debra Bowen’s MySpace Page sports a curious bit of info

DISCLAIMER: This site was created by a volunteer independent of the official Debra Bowen for Secretary of State campaign. The information on this page may not reflect the exact positions or opinions of Senator Bowen, her campaign committee, her campaign staff, or her Senate staff.

And closer to home for me the newly elected Congressional Candidate and grassroots extraordinaire Nancy Boyda has a similar disclaimer on her MySpace

“this website is not affiliated with nancyforcongress.com or the Boyda campaign”

Interestingly, Boyda’s MySpace page features updated articles in the blog about goings on in Kansas and Washington - even a Congrats to the University of Kansas Basketball Team and their success in the NCAA Tournament. It also features campaign commercials via YouTube from the 2004 and 2006 campaigns as well as a banner available for supporters to post on their own profile pages declaring they are a “MySpace Voter for Boyda.” I mention this because it seems to have surpassed the actual campaign site which seems to be under construction.

With all of this - it prompted me to ask - how many sites are actually run by their campaigns!? Edwards clearly runs his, as does Hillary just don’t mistake it for HillaryClinton2008 or even her husband’s reelection fan site.

I sent messages around to some of the fan run Myspace Pages this morning but Catie - who started Boyda’s page in May of 2006 - was the only one to respond. She said she wasn’t the designer of the site a friend did it for her but she constantly tries to update it.

“I go to school too so sometimes I can’t be as attentive” she said. “But when its basketball season for KU or football season for KState I tried to keep it up.”

Don’t come between Kansans and their sports.

Catie says she did have some trouble with the campaign last year when she mistakenly posted a bulletin about advanced balloting

“I tried to figure out when the last day to fill out an advanced ballot or the last day to register to vote was and there was a lot of conflicting information on the Secretary of State website. I posted a date that was for the Clerks which was not necessarily for voters. The Kansas Party contacted me right away and told me that the information was wrong and gave me the correct information and posted a correction. Then they posted that on their MySpace site and their State Party website.”

But Catie said it was a few days later before she heard from the Boyda campaign.

“Someone sent me a message from her Myspace page and told me they were going to sue me if I didn’t turn the site over to them. I was only 19, I had no idea what I got myself into.”

Catie said she never knew if it was someone who was actually working for the campaign or someone from the opposing campaign trying to scare her. It worked. Catie was terrified. She researched other sites run by volunteers and asked them what they do and how they work with the campaign. Most, she said, were volunteers that were embraced by the staffers but none of them had been threatened with legal actions.

“My dad finally told me it was probably a good idea to take the site down.

Her story is similar to Joe Anthony in that she did in-depth research to find answers to questions asked by her MySpace friends and steer people toward the campaign for volunteer opportunities. But in the last month of the 2006 election Catie and her two friends who worked with her on the site, researched policy questions, attended rallies to get quotes from the candidate’s mouth, stopped updating and stopped collecting friends across Kansas. She replied to the person and informed her that she was pulling the site and that the threat was baseless because there were so many sites run by “fans” or “volunteers” but she understood the overall concern. If it was an opposing campaign they scared Catie enough to stop posting - but it didn’t matter in the long run - Nancy still won.

The evolution of termed “new media” was something Catie’s Communications class talked about after the election and she felt brave enough to try again - assuming the campaign would contact her if it became a problem.

“Does anyone really believe that Thomas Jefferson’s family is running his MySpace? I don’t think so. But if it brings people to his speeches and his work I think its a good thing.”

Catie says she never heard from the campaign about the problem or the threats. She jokes it was a right wing conspiracy and says that if Nancy had lost she would have felt guilty she pulled the site so close to the election. But she said she never wanted to make trouble. To this day she has never been contacted by the campaign or the House staff and said she assumed they never knew the site existed. But recently she says she got up the guts to start recruiting friends again. Not quite as strong as Bowen and Phil - Boyda’s site has over 750 friends mostly from Kansas and Catie says they are mostly from the district.

“I get a lot of friend requests from organizations and people all over. I set a rule that we were only going to friend bands from Kansas. You know, support local music.”

Catie and Anthony aren’t unusual. Today’s campaigns are barely able to keep up with new technologies. And larger more traditional campaign staffers aren’t equip to handle the online needs or the desires of grassroots volunteers. And where does MySpace and Facebook fit in to a campaign? Should your Communications Director know how to design a MySpace page or should your Field Manager be on it? But the chances are that by the time campaigns are asking themselves these questions they are discovering what Phil Angelides did - its already been done for them.

With smaller districts its easier to communicate with voters but parallel campaigns sprung up all over California for Debra Bowen as well. Ralph Miller from Latinos for Democracy was one of the groups who raised money to run ads in Spanish over Spanish Radio endorsing the Bowen campaign in her Primary challenge against a Latino Senator. Another parallel campaign raised money to print yard signs because the campaign didn’t have any plans to do signs. Add to that the MySpace campaign and the Facebook campaign - as well as a website “Grassroots for Bowen” a still active site that links to Yahoo Groups and YouTube videos.

Campaigns in rural areas or places that aren’t targets for the national party have a hard enough time getting traction, attention, support, not to mention volunteers . This new movement of netroots enables volunteers to use their talents to advocate in behalf of their candidates. Some campaigns bring the volunteers into the fold and others flex their political muscle against well intentioned college students who want to do more than stand on street corners with signs or help with mailings.

I won’t claim to have any knowledge or understanding for the best way campaigns can coordinate with the netroots community - but I think the best campaigns are the ones who understand the skills of their volunteers and use them most effectively. Dean it was house parties and emails, Webb it was YouTube and Blogs, and every year there will be something new and different.

Joe Anthony from Obama’s MYspace page is soured about the whole ordeal:

“This was largely symbolic. The same campaign that inspired me to work so hard to build this community, the same campaign whose underlying message stresses “the power of the individual to have an impact on politics”, was constantly downplaying my role in this, bullying me, and a couple of other things that were just rotten and dishonest.” TechPresident

But Catie is still optimistic:

“It is essential for Nancy to represent this district. We have seen her so much more than we ever saw Ryun. The people need her leadership and her passion to help them. I’ve never been more honored to work on someone’s behalf.”

Joe Anthony is a paralegal in Los Angeles and Catie (who never gave her last name) is now 20 and a Junior at Pittsburg State University in Pittsburg, Kansas. Ralph Miller is a blogger and activist but also serves as the Executive Director for Latinos for Democracy.