The Rutland Herald/Times Argus (Rutland, VT)

Net gain: Dean gets online boost

By TRACY SCHMALER Vermont Press Bureau

It was the penny that threw them off.

Normally, it’s a good sign when the presidential campaign of a former
governor from a small state receives a flood of donations.

But one afternoon a few months ago, officials at former Gov. Howard Dean’s
campaign offices in Burlington were more perplexed than elated.

“I remember the computer guy coming into the office with this puzzled look
on his face. He said we were getting all these contributions with a penny
(extra) on them,” said Joe Trippi, Dean’s campaign manager. “Immediately, we
thought it was a problem with the server.”

It wasn’t. It was the power of the Internet.

When Trippi and others started looking into the penny phenomenon, they found
that Dean supporters outside the Dean for America campaign had launched a
‘Million Dollar Challenge’ over the Internet. And, as a way to discern the
donations for this challenge from other contributions coming in, they added
a penny to the bottom line.

Welcome to campaign 2004, where the Internet is emerging as one of the more
important political tools since television.

“I really believe 2004 will be the year the Net is mature enough to impact
elections,” said Trippi, who has worked in various capacities on a handful
of other presidential campaigns. “I think we’re looking at the first cycle
in which the right candidate at exactly the right time, along with the
maturity of the Net, are all hitting their stride together.”

The money factor

For Dean, especially, the Internet has become and an integral — and
profitable — campaign device.

In the first quarter of the year, Dean has raised almost a third of his
total contributions on the Internet.

Of the $2.6 million he raised, roughly $773,000 came from the Internet, and
$400,000 of that came in the last six days of the reporting period.

“There’s basically two reasons people haven’t seen this kind of success this
early,” Trippi said. “The first reason is you have to have a candidate who
says something and stands for something. There has to be a message, the
other candidates lack that. … The other piece of it is knowing what you’re
doing on the Net.”

U.S. Sens. John Kerry of Massachusetts and John Edwards of North Carolina
are winning the money race so far, with $7 million for Kerry and $7.4
million for Edwards.

U.S. Rep. Richard Gephardt of Missouri reported $6 million in the first
three months. And U.S. Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut raised about $3
million.

Kerry’s campaign reported raising $450,000 of its $7 million from the
Internet.

Gephardt’s campaign flatly refused to release an Internet figure.

“We’re not releasing a breakdown of any of the money,” said Erik Smith,
Gephardt’s press secretary. The campaign later released figures showing that
$2.4 million of the $6 million Gephardt reported in the first quarter was
transferred from his congressional campaign committee.

The staff from the Lieberman and Edwards camps spent several days trying to
calculate that figure at a reporter’s request, but did not have it at press
time.

“We don’t have it yet. You can do almost anything with the numbers and it’s
not our highest priority right now,” said Jano Cabrera, Lieberman’s press
secretary.

The notion of using the Internet to raise money has been gaining popularity
as consumers become more comfortable conducting financial transactions
online, yet it still remains a fledgling idea in politics, said Anthony
Corrado, professor of government at Colby College in Maine.

U.S. Sen. John McCain of Arizona made some headway in 2000 when he raised
about $5 million over the Internet, Corrado said.

“The morning after his New Hampshire (primary) victory, he had already
received $162,000 on the Web site,” he recalled. “At one point, I think the
rate of contributions coming in was $18,000 an hour.”

The Internet can be particularly valuable in candidates’ bid to raise money
because most contributions are small — the average is about $119 — and they
are eligible for federal matching funds, Corrado said.

“You really can get a double bang and your cost is not the typical 15
percent that would be the case in this type of fund-raising,” he said.

He noted that campaigns generally expend their time and resources on direct
mailings, phone calls seeking money and small fund-raisers.

For a campaign like Dean’s, the Internet helps him reach more donors than he
would if he had to use traditional means.

“I think you really see it with Howard Dean. I was surprised at how much he
raised on the Internet,” Corrado said. “Outside of Vermont, he’s still
basically an unknown. As he goes around country, I think his message appeals
to people and I think he’s surprised lot of Democrats out there.”

Net roots

Trippi attributes Dean’s early strides to heavy reliance on the Internet,
both as a fund-raising mechanism and a cheap way to get his message to the
masses.

“We don’t have the ability to put 100 field staffers on the ground in every
state … it makes it pretty important for us to build a grass roots, Net
roots support across the country,” he said. “(The Internet) is a major
component of the campaign … particularly because of how we started out with
less money and less national money connections than any of the other
campaigns.”

In Dean’s case, the partnership with a little-known Internet company is
where it began, or at least where it started to take off.

Meetup Inc. is a Manhattan company that connects people from around the
country who share interests in similar topics, whether it’s Elvis, knitting
or Howard Dean.

The Web site acts as a conduit for people to find other like-minded people
in their region or city. It also keeps a rolling tally of how many people
have signed up from various cities for a given topic.

Meetup provides lists of possible sites to connect the people (mainly
restaurants and bars, which pay the company a fee for the exposure) who have
signed up for the same topic.

“We’ve created a way and means for people to connect with their neighbors,”
said Myles Weissleder, vice president of communications for the company.

The company began less than a year ago and never intended to get involved in
politics. It happened one day when a Dean supporter asked if a “Howard Dean
Meetup” session could be scheduled.

Today, with more than 16,000 supporters on the site, Dean is the number one
topic, Weissleder said, noting that Dean has tested the limits of the
company. Meetup founders never expected more than 30 or so members to attend
any given Meetup session and Dean’s have attracted hundreds, making it
difficult to find the right venues.

“To be honest, there is no real difference between knitters and politicians,
it’s how the campaign chooses to maximize it,” he said.

Dean for America embraced it.

Trippi regularly checks the site, monitoring the tallies in various cities
and checking on other candidates’ Meetup sites, all of which followed Dean’
s. He is particularly fond of contrasting Dean’s high numbers (in the tens
of thousands) with Kerry’s low ones (in the hundreds).

Dean’s longtime special assistant, Kate O’Connor, was glued to her computer
watching the tally of Dean supporters break the 15,000 mark, beating out
witches as the most popular topic.

“She was on the edge of her seat,” Trippi said.

The campaign put a link on its Web site to Meetup and has contracted with
the company for more integration with campaign events.

Meanwhile, Dean for America has devoted several staffers to focus solely on
electronic campaigning — reaching out to voters, organizing supporters and
raising money.

The evolution of the Internet as a campaign tool is just beginning, said Ken
Mayer, professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin in
Madison.

Six years ago, a candidate would have looked puzzled if asked about a Web
site address. Now, it is a place where candidates can provide information
that was never readily available before like copies of speeches, policy
papers and newsletters.

In six years, the Internet may be more pivotal in elections than television
because its cheaper, faster and likely to be more pervasive in society.

“The Internet is becoming more and more significant and it’s only going to
become more important as candidates figure out how to use it … and they’ll
figure it out because it’s cheap,” Mayer predicted. “This has the potential
to be a real revolution in the way that campaigns are conducted.”

Contact Tracy Schmaler at tracy.schmaler@rutlandherald.com.

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