Monday, August 16, 1999
Web sites trickling down to elections at local level
Internet's impact remains to be seen
BY HOWARD WILKINSON
The Cincinnati Enquirer
It all started a long time ago when someone taught a politician how to use a telephone.
Then, some political campaign manager realized that the new technology of television could be used for something more than selling toothpaste and corn flakes.
And now, there is the Internet.
Every time a new communications technology has come along, it has changed the way politics has been played in this country, for better or worse.
“There are some outrageous claims out there about how the Internet is going to revolutionize politics,” said Judith Trent, a professor of political communications at the University of Cincinnati. “It happens every time there's a new technology.”
Whether the Internet changes completely the way candidates run for office remains to be seen, Ms. Trent and others in her field say, but there is no doubt that the Internet — particularly candidate Web sites — are becoming as familiar a campaign tool as bumper stickers and yard signs.
When candidate Web sites first became popular in 1996, they were largely the domain of presidential candidates. And in 1998, numerous statewide cam paigns used campaign Web sites, including an active one posted by Bob Taft, the successful Republican candidate for Ohio governor. But, in 1999, they have filtered down to the local level of politics.
Already three candidates for Cincinnati City Council — Democrats Todd Portune and Scott Seidewitz and Republican Pat DeWine — have campaign Web sites up and running, and more are expected to follow.
“I'm trying to reach the 30 percent or so of the electorate who use the Internet and are used to communicating that way,” said Mr. Seidewitz, a first-time council candidate. “It's a marketing tool.”
All three of the council candidates who have Web sites say they plan to advertise them heavily in their campaign literature and TV and radio ads. Visitors to the Web sites in this early stage of the campaign will find:
• At portune99.org, a biography of the incumbent councilman, a series of issue statements, news articles about Mr. Portune, an interactive “Todd Answers Your Questions” section, and information on how to volunteer for the campaign or make financial contributions.
• At PatDeWine.com, “Pat's pledge” to Cincinnati voters, a biography of the Republican candidate and information on how to volunteer for the campaign.
• At voteSeidewitz.com, there are pictures of the candidate with his nieces, a “Voice Your Opinion” section and links to various other Cincinnati Web sites, including newspapers and TV stations.
Mr. Portune said he sees the Web site as a way of “creating interest in the campaign, making a connection with people.”
Mr. DeWine, a first-time candidate, said he sees the Internet site as a way to put together the kind of grassroots political organization that candidates used to create with shoe leather and telephone calls.
“It's high-tech grassroots,” said Mr. DeWine. The campaign, he said, has already generated some volunteers from the Web site and hopes to bring in more as public awareness of the Web site grows.
And, Mr. DeWine said, it is a “cheap way of reaching the public.” In his case, a campaign volunteer who had never put together a Web site before created PatDeWine.com and is maintaining it.
What makes a campaign Web site a unique tool for a candidate, Mr. Seidewitz said, is that voters who look at the Web site can “talk” back to it.
“It's interactive, so people can tell me what's on their minds,” Mr. Seidewitz said. “That helps me as a candidate.”
Gary Selnow, a political scientist at San Francisco State University who has written extensively about politics on the Internet, said the interactive features of the latest campaign Web sites are what distinguish them from the early ones.
“The first campaign Web sites just kind of sat there,” said Mr. Selnow, author of a book on use of the Internet in the 1996 national election. “Now you've got campaign Web sites where the voters plug directly into the action.”
One such site is that of Republican presidential contender Steve Forbes — a Web site designed by Rick Segal of Hensley Segal Rentschler Inc., a Springdale-based firm.
Mr. Segal has been on the campaign trail with Mr. Forbes in Iowa, traveling on a “high-tech” bus, where the candidate's campaign stops are digitally photographed and transmitted back to Springdale to be posted almost immediately on the Forbes Web site.
It is an example of the kind of instant, electronic “news coverage” that campaigns can generate themselves without having their messages filtered by the traditional news media.
The technology, Mr. Selnow said, allows candidates to “talk directly to the voters.”
Mr. Selnow said that the Internet is making another, more subtle impact on politics. “Suddenly, organizations that you wouldn't think of as being political are using their Web sites on political issues.”
Mr. Selnow said his research has found the Web site of a classical music society that was using it to encourage members to write legislators to urge continued funding for the arts, and a western fly-fishing club that was using its Web site to organize its members against a state regulation.
“The good news is that the Internet seems to be drawing more people into the political process,” Mr. Selnow said.
But Ms. Trent said that she doubts that the day is coming when elections are played out over the World Wide Web.
“Like the telephone and TV, the Internet will be part of campaigns, but not the whole campaign,” she said. “There's no reason to believe that people who have been passive about news and politics are going to be any less so because it is on the Internet.”
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