One of Sen. Evan Bayh's (D-Ind.) favorite television shows is, fittingly, The West Wing. Bayh also joins the ranks of Americans who love Graeter's black raspberry chip ice cream, despite the fact that Graeter's Ice Cream is only sold in one location in Indiana. Bayh's favorite car is a Jeep Wrangler and one of his favorite books is "History of the English Speaking People" by Winston Churchill.
In the past, most people would never have the opportunity to find out this much non-political information about the possible 2008 presidential candidate, but now they can because it is all found on his Facebook profile.
That's right. Welcome to the new world of political campaigning. Social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace and Friendster are presenting politicians with another way to reach out to voters and, according to some, a more effective way to reach younger voters.
Dan Pfeiffer, communications director for the All America PAC, which supports Democratic candidates throughout the United States, said the younger staff members suggested using Facebook for the campaign.
"I think it's been successful because it allows college students and younger voters to interact with politicians on their own terms," he said.
And Bayh is not the only politician to go this route. Mike Sodrel (R-District 9) also built up his Facebook profile to reach out to young voters. Sodrel's campaign office was unavailable for comment, but his profile goes as far as providing a phone number to reach the campaign office. Sodrel's notes, or blog entries, just as Bayh's, discuss issues that come up during the election.
"I think social networking sites are growing in popularity among all policitians," Pfeiffer said.
Since the creation of his profile during the summer, Bayh has added 6,000 friends on Facebook. Although a staff person for the All America PAC does day-to-day maintenance for his Facebook profile, Bayh enjoys updating it himself on a regular basis, Pfeiffer said.
In local elections, Sue Errington, the democrat running for state senator, also has a regularly updated Facebook group. Mike Kostyo, a Ball State graduate and media and public relations coordinator for Friends of Sue Errington, said creating the Facebook profile allowed people interested in the campaign to come together in one location at their own convenience.
"These days, students only communicate by computers," Kostyo said. "I think one of the best things is that it lets students talk to each other."
According to Colin Delany, creator of e.politics.com, a blog that focuses on online political campaigning, "social networking sites' users tend to be younger, so they're particularly handy tools if you're trying to reach high school/college students and recent graduates."
In Online Politics 101, an online booklet of tools and tactics for online political advocacy, Delany advises campaign managers to be aware of the problems that could arise from using these sites. He cited the MoveOn.org situation from 2004. "If you'll recall, early in 2004 the group encouraged its members to create anti-Bush ads that it would then evaluate for actual use on television. Hundreds of ads were submitted and placed online, but one used historical footage to associate the Bush administration with Hitler and the Nazi party. Oops - that one ad gave MoveOn.org's enemies fodder for days of attacks on the organization."
Delany says, though, that heavy gatekeeping can prevent some problems from occurring for politicians and campaigns that use social networking sites.
"Allowing your members or readers to generate content has some real strengths as a tactic," he wrote. "It allows you to capture the brainpower of far more people than you could reasonably hire... It's potentially a terrific tool for community building."
Joe Trippi, former campaign manager for Howard Dean, one of the candidates for the Democratic party in the 2004 presidential race, wrote a book about politicians who use the Web as a politicking resource. In "The Revolution Will Not be Televised," Trippi writes that politicians should be focusing more on their Web sites than other campaigning devices.
"Every business that spends $20 million on television advertising and just $20,000 to post a static Web site that is updated once a month had better watch their backs," he wrote in the introduction to his book. "Every institution that doesn't understand that the technology is finally here to allow people to reject what they're being given and demand what they want had better start paying attention."
Facebook, MySpace and other social networking sites create an environment of interactivity that no other campaigning medium has allowed before. The Internet is a place where people can voice their concerns to people who can make changes, Trippi wrote, and reaching voters in their homes with a real dialogue and in an interactive dynamic will define political campaigns in the future.
Kostyo said the sites could encourage more people to register and vote because they care more about an issue they feel involved with.
"You just never know until Election Day," he said.
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