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The Dean Dream

The 2004 presidential campaign may mark the beginning of a new era of Internet campaigning.

Though former Democratic contender Howard Dean may not go down in history as the 44th U.S. president, his campaign may go down in history because it changed the way political hopefuls rally support. The campaign's unique use of Internet technology, such as meetup.com, could be a useful lesson to others wishing to gain office -- especially lesser-known candidates for state and local offices.

Much was made of Dean's ability to raise funds via the Internet, and initially Dean's e-campaign received high marks for generating a groundswell of Dean backers. There was plenty of talk that his campaign would revolutionize campaigning specifically, and politics generally.

There's no doubt Dean succeeded at creating a strong Web presence overall, but that didn't translate to instant political success -- as some perhaps overly enthusiastic observers speculated in the beginning of the race.


The Right Steps
"They were just masters at getting information to supporters and getting local e-mail lists going," said Richard Davis, a political science professor at Brigham Young University (BYU).

Though Dean's bid flamed out rather quickly during the Iowa and New Hampshire democratic primaries, his legacy continues to impact this year's election campaigns. But the impact Dean's campaign had may not be what many expect, according to Tom Spooner, a research specialist at the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

"People are going to look at this Howard Dean [phenomenon] and say this is a new paradigm about politics online, and that people have become more engaged online with politics, money and all that other stuff," he said. "But the number of people who have been going to political Web sites has been the same since fall of 2000."

According to the project's research, the same percentage of Internet users visiting Al Gore's Web site and George W. Bush's Web site in 2000 is visiting presidential contenders' Web sites now.

"You can talk about the Howard Dean phenomenon in terms of the money, for instance, how much he was able to raise online," Spooner said. "But if I recall correctly, even Al Gore was doing that four years ago."

The difference this electoral season, argues Spooner, was the role of an online technology that translated into real-world support: meetup.com.

"This sort of online Dean community was created, and then it became an actual community when you went to these meetups," Spooner said. "It wasn't just based on going to certain Web pages; people took that opportunity to physically meet each other to become an actual community, and whatever forces come out of that."


Meetup to the Challenge
Through proprietary technology and a global network of local venues, meetup.com helps people self-organize local group gatherings in as many as 612 cities in 51 countries.

Meetup.com helps create meeting agendas, send reminder and feedback e-mails, and offers a partnership account manager to expand the number and size of meetups. A campaign's IT person can control the campaign's meetup site through customized administrator tools.

Initially, as grassroots movements go, it wasn't Dean's campaign that hitched on meetup.com, said Myles Weissleder, meetup.com's vice president of communications.

"The supporters tapped into it first," Weissleder said. "They wanted to meet up to talk about this guy Howard Dean, and then the campaign realized what was going on, and soon after, partnered with us to help fuel these meetups even better."

Former campaign manager Joe Trippi read on a Weblog that many Dean supporters around the country were getting together using meetup.com. Trippi visited the Web site, and within a couple of weeks, decided the campaign would encourage supporters to use meetup.com, ultimately affixing the icon and link in a prominent spot on the Dean for America home page.

This prompted more than 180,000 people to sign up and meet in person. By word of mouth, meetup activity prompted unexpectedly large crowds at Dean speeches. In its prime, Weissleder said, the Dean campaign reached approximately 1,000 meetups occurring on the same night around the country.

Though Weissleder admits the Dean campaign has easily been their brightest star, he added there was more to it than that.

"Interestingly enough, it was a great symbiotic relationship in that Dean certainly helped put Meetup on the map, but in the same respect, we really helped put him on the map," he said.

State and local races are now beginning to benefit from the trail blazed by the Dean campaign. There are meetups already set up for every single declared race in 2004 -- congressional, senatorial and gubernatorial.

"You go to meetup.com and either drill down to your location, or type in a name of somebody running for office in your district, and you will see a meetup set up for them," Weissleder said.

Though meetup.com was not intended to be a political forum, Weissleder said, the fact that politics has become so pervasive is beneficial to both meetup and candidates who wish to reach voters.

"Meetup was built to help Elvis fans find each other -- and knitters and poodle owners -- but it did and continues to do a fantastic job in the political realm," he said. "We are certainly not going to let that go bye-bye. We have outreach right now to all the campaigns to entice them to tap into the added value -- the tools we offer to partners, which gives them a little more control, a little more custom ability of their meetups. Otherwise, it's just a people-powered thing that's going to happen with or without them. It would have happened with or without Dean getting involved. But because the campaign did get involved, they were able to leverage it even more."

Weissleder said he and his associates certainly sense more business along political lines.

"A lot of people are saying it's a standard chapter in the playbook of American politics moving forward," he said.


State and Local Impact
An Internet campaign could be most beneficial at the state and local levels, said BYU's Davis, because presidential candidates get so much traditional media coverage.

"It's hard to go through the country and find people unaware of a presidential election going on -- who the candidates are and some of the stories that circulate around," he said, adding that media coverage is often lacking for state and local races. "People need information. That's where the Internet, particularly candidate Web sites, can be most useful -- if you can get people to go there -- because they actually do get more information."

The real problem is leading people there, Davis said. The Internet can reach a small niche of already likely supporters, which are those who go to Web sites.

"If you think your Web site, as a candidate, is going to be useful to reach undecided voters, then you are whistling past the graveyard," he said.

People who go to political Web sites tend to already support the candidate -- something much less likely for people who are undecided, which Davis said was found in BYU's research in 2000.

"We had maybe 10 percent of voters who were undecided going to candidate Web sites to get information, so that's not your audience," he said. "If you want to reinforce your supporters, mobilize your supporters -- the Internet is a great tool to do that. If, however, you want to find or convert the undecided or even opponents' supporters, that's not the way to do it."
sing meetup.com. Trippi visited the Web site, and within a couple of weeks, decided the campaign would encourage supporters to use meetup.com, ultimately affixing the icon and link in a prominent spot on the Dean for America home page.

This prompted more than 180,000 people to sign up and meet in person. By word of mouth, meetup activity prompted unexpectedly large crowds at Dean speeches. In its prime, Weissleder said, the Dean campaign reached approximately 1,000 meetups occurring on the same night around the country.

Though Weissleder admits the Dean campaign has easily been their brightest star, he added there was more to it than that.

"Interestingly enough, it was a great symbiotic relationship in that Dean certainly helped put Meetup on the map, but in the same respect, we really helped put him on the map," he said.

State and local races are now beginning to benefit from the trail blazed by the Dean campaign. There are meetups already set up for every single declared race in 2004 -- congressional, senatorial and gubernatorial.

"You go to meetup.com and either drill down to your location, or type in a name of somebody running for office in your district, and you will see a meetup set up for them," Weissleder said.

Though meetup.com was not intended to be a political forum, Weissleder said, the fact that politics has become so pervasive is beneficial to both meetup and candidates who wish to reach voters.

"Meetup was built to help Elvis fans find each other -- and knitters and poodle owners -- but it did and continues to do a fantastic job in the political realm," he said. "We are certainly not going to let that go bye-bye. We have outreach right now to all the campaigns to entice them to tap into the added value -- the tools we offer to partners, which gives them a little more control, a little more custom ability of their meetups. Otherwise, it's just a people-powered thing that's going to happen with or without them. It would have happened with or without Dean getting involved. But because the campaign did get involved, they were able to leverage it even more."

Weissleder said he and his associates certainly sense more business along political lines.

"A lot of people are saying it's a standard chapter in the playbook of American politics moving forward," he said.


State and Local Impact
An Internet campaign could be most beneficial at the state and local levels, said BYU's Davis, because presidential candidates get so much traditional media coverage.

"It's hard to go through the country and find people unaware of a presidential election going on -- who the candidates are and some of the stories that circulate around," he said, adding that media coverage is often lacking for state and local races. "People need information. That's where the Internet, particularly candidate Web sites, can be most useful -- if you can get people to go there -- because they actually do get more information."

The real problem is leading people there, Davis said. The Internet can reach a small niche of already likely supporters, which are those who go to Web sites.

"If you think your Web site, as a candidate, is going to be useful to reach undecided voters, then you are whistling past the graveyard," he said.

People who go to political Web sites tend to already support the candidate -- something much less likely for people who are undecided, which Davis said was found in BYU's research in 2000.

"We had maybe 10 percent of voters who were undecided going to candidate Web sites to get information, so that's not your audience," he said. "If you want to reinforce your supporters, mobilize your supporters -- the Internet is a great tool to do that. If, however, you want to find or convert the undecided or even opponents' supporters, that's not the way to do it."

Will a campaign like Dean's light the way for other more successful campaigns using technology in a similar way?

"State and locally -- it's hard to say," said Pew Internet's Spooner. "It would be nice to know, of that 45 percent of Internet users who go online for political information, are they primarily focused on national candidates? Is it all levels? We don't really know, but I'm sure people at the state and local level will follow the Dean model and replicate it -- especially the fund-raising and getting volunteer momentum going by using meetup and all."

Carol Darr, director of the Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet at George Washington University, said the fund-raising aspect of the Internet is likely to attract local candidates.

"A lot of what Dean did is going to get translated down at the local level," she said. "No candidate ever has enough money and particularly local candidates never have enough money. The Internet just makes things so quick and easy and cheap."

Early in the Dean campaign, Vice President Dick Cheney held a luncheon with 125 people who gave $2,000 each, totaling $250,000. Calling it the "Cheney Challenge," the Dean campaign gathered a $53 average donation from 9,700 supporters in four days, totaling more than $500,000. This marked an early milestone in campaign fund-raising and foreshadowed the more than $41 million raised, largely through the Internet, before the Iowa upset.

"The other thing this is all about is digitization of information in campaigns," Darr said. "Yes, you could put things on three-by-five cards if you were technology illiterate, but when you start putting things in a digital form -- whether its computer lists, door to door, phone, e-mail lists -- and you have material you can put on a Web site in a digital form, it all comes together, and it becomes easy and interoperative."

Darr predicts the American public will see continued Internet use in future campaigns, but also said she believes the Internet won't replace traditional campaign techniques.

"What it does, what it can do for you, and what it really cannot do for you -- as you hone that, you get to the point where candidates can't abandon traditional media," she said. "All of those early predictions about the Internet -- that it's going to revolutionize politics so the traditional campaign doesn't become as important, or that it's going to make it easier for candidates who don't have much money to do well -- all of those, we will see just ain't so."

BYU's Davis agreed.

"It just isn't the magic elixir that people suggest in terms of invigorating the voters or changing politics to effect the balance of power," he said.

Though it may not be a magic elixir, the Dean campaign's Internet tactics could be a valuable tool to campaign managers, and perhaps most importantly, to voters who want to make informed decisions.

"Unlike television, the Internet is more of an active medium -- you actually have to choose to be part of it," Davis said. "Television is more of a passive medium in the sense that it just comes at you. With leaflets, direct mail, leaflets on your door -- these are things you don't have to do anything to get, you don't have to click anywhere, you don't have to find any information, it just comes to you. In that way, the Internet is more useful to voters."