News & Record

Money talks, which is why every presidential aspirant is suddenly listening to weblogs.

In late July, the Howard Dean campaign announced via its weblog that Dick Cheney was hosting a $2,000 per plate fundraiser. Dean asked his network of readers and bloggers to better the $250,000 that Cheney was expected to raise. Almost 10,000 people responded. Cheney’s expensive lunch netted about $300,000. Dean spun the same event into more than $500,000 in four days.

Not quite the Nixon-Kennedy debates, which established the power of television as a campaign tool, but a milestone nonetheless in the evolution of the Web as a force in American elections. Weblogs, those self-published, frequently updated personal sites that have started to transform journalism, are changing the political landscape as well.

The campaign weblog was born a year ago this month, right here in Guilford County, when an unknown Libertarian named Tara Sue Grubb began publishing onto the Web as part of her bid to unseat Sixth District perma-congressman Howard Coble. Grubb didn’t run much of a campaign and got trounced at the polls, but her footnote in history is secure, even if her current campaign for mayor of Greensboro doesn’t survive the primary.

Dean, the current coverboy for both Time and Newsweek, owes some portion of his unexpected success to his weblog, BlogforAmerica. His rivals in both parties have noticed his fundraising prowess, and some have already jumped in with weblogs of their own, with more sure to follow.

The irony is that generating cashflow is a secondary characteristic of the campaign weblog. The real key to a weblog’s power is the ability it gives a candidate to communicate in his or her own voice, and to interact with voters through their comments on the blog and through weblogs of their own. “Campaigns can be conversations,” says David Weinberger, Senior Internet Advisor to the Dean campaign. “This is the opposite of broadcast media, it’s different from corporate websites and other political sites.”

Substituting a personal voice for neatly-tailored campaign rhetoric is a bold move. So is letting others in a campaign express themselves freely – staffers write and sign much of BlogforAmerica’s content. “It seems to matter a lot that people in this campaign are allowed to speak,” says Weinberger. “It says a huge amount about the candidate’s willingness to trust others, including readers, and to be candid, to give up some control of the message.”

Whether other candidates can open their campaigns in this way remains to be seen. I would be surprised if George Bush doesn’t raise millions of dollars in the coming year from a network of sympathetic bloggers, but even more surprised to see a truly personal site for him and his staff. Bush’s direct style might make him a good blogger, but his team will never turn him loose. John Edwards meanwhile is a gifted speaker who might use the tool well, but he just made his first foray into weblogging last week by answering some questions at my site.

There are risks and unknowns to the medium. What happens when an opponent points to a malapropism, or some shady content on one of the sites linked to a campaign weblog?  “Anything from a campaign is assumed to be a noose you can be hanged with,” says Weinberger. But that’s the antithesis of blog culture. “Weblogs only work if they are somewhat indiscreet,” he says. “We grant each other permission, preemptive forgiveness, and say that’s OK, we get to hear what you’re thinking.” Whether the mass of voters is ready for this new conversation remains to be seen.

Here in the cradle of political blogging, the local campaign weblog continues to evolve. David Hoggard, an at-large candidate for city council, started writing one earlier this month. “I want my weblog to get out my personality, who I am, what I’m thinking,” he says. “It’s kind of like sitting and talking in a living room -- that’s my strength—a direct link to people I can’t see directly.” Tara Grubb also has a campaign weblog at www.Tarasue4U.com.

Hoggard includes links to sites that disagree with him on key issues such as the downtown ballpark. “I want to provide one portal for information, and that means putting it all up there,” he says. Recently he has been discussing the FedEx hub on his blog, admitting that he’s learning along the way. It’s not the traditional voice of a candidate, but the voice of real person in real time.

Contrast Hoggard’s shaggy style to that of mayoral candidate Bruce Ashley. The Greensboro attorney’s traditional website is full of information and plans and schedules. The only thing missing is Ashley himself, who appears only in canned photos and words. For all we can tell, the difference between Ashley and incumbent Keith Holliday is the difference between skim milk and 2%.

A weblog might help differentiate Ashley from his opponents. He’s considering one now. Go for it, Bruce, these things are powerful. Just ask Howard Dean, or his rivals.