Online Networking Puts Candidates in Touch With the Young

When Assemblyman Sam Hoyt wanted a crowd to fill a nightclub for a concert and campaign event for then-gubernatorial candidate Eliot L. Spitzer, he turned to the Web site Facebook to complete the guest list.

When Niagara County Legislator Andrea McNulty needed help for a last weekend of electioneering, her campaign manager took out a Facebook ad.

And Laura Manley volunteered for Ed Rath III’s Erie County Legislature race only after she noticed his profile on Facebook.

"I found Facebook to be a great asset for us in linking into the college and just-post-college generation," Rath said.

The popular social networking Web site, long the province of students, is now a haven for local politicians and national figures such as New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee.

Candidates are flocking to Facebook to set up profile pages, make friends, advertise events and recruit campaign support.

This year, the major presidential candidates are trying to reach people through Facebook, the equally popular MySpace, YouTube and Flickr, where users share videos and photos.

And it’s trickling down to candidates at the local level, with Rath, Hoyt, Assemblyman Mike Cole and Common Council President David Franczyk all popping up on Facebook.

"By no means does it replace face-to-face communication. It’s a tool to help us spread our message," said Jon Powers, 29, who has a Facebook profile as he challenges Rep. Thomas Reynolds.

Candidates must translate that Facebook friend into an off-line volunteer and voter, said Julie Barko Germany, director of the Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet at George Washington University.

Every presidential campaign cycle seems to introduce a new technology that promises an improved method to reach voters and prospective donors.

In 2000, just having a Web site was enough for a candidate.

Four years later, Web-based fundraising and blogging captured a lot of attention.

"I think we saw this connection between social networking and real life with the Howard Dean campaign in 2004," said Trebor Scholz, an assistant professor of media study at the University at Buffalo who studies the social Web. "I think he really pioneered that in a lot of ways."

Facebook, MySpace and similar sites are a big part of online life, especially for young people. MySpace, for instance, had 69 million unique visitors in December, according to comScore, a site that tracks Web use.

A new poll, released this month by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, found that people younger than 30 often get campaign news through the social Web. Forty-one percent of people in this age group have watched a campaign-related video online, and 27 percent got campaign news from a social networking site, the survey found.

>’Communication tool’

So far, candidates at the presidential level are best taking advantage of the Facebook audience, and Illinois Sen. Barack Obama seems to have the most support there.

As of Wednesday, Obama had 264,000 supporters on his Facebook page, which links to video clips of his speeches and comments from more than 24,000 visitors.

Clinton’s page has 80,000 supporters, but four large anti- Clinton groups on Facebook have 829,000 total members.

The candidates all have a presence on MySpace and YouTube as well, with staffers posting video footage from ads, appearances and debates.

Several videos posted to YouTube already have grabbed attention and sparked controversy, so much so that the New York Times in December called this the "YouTube Election."

"Young kids don’t watch TV news," said Alan Bedenko, the BuffaloPundit blogger. "They get all their information from the Net, from blogs, from Twitter [a mobile social networking service]. This is just another appendage for them. This is something they’re on all the time."

In the Buffalo Niagara region, the local congressional delegation has pages on Facebook.

Reynolds has 261 supporters and a message from a visitor named Tom Reynolds who wrote, "attaboy!!!! way to represent."

Reynolds and Rep. Louise Slaughter both have dedicated channels on YouTube with frequently updated video postings.

Rep. Brian Higgins has a Facebook page — but that might have been news to him.

"Hey this is my dad! I didn’t even know he had one of these! I don’t think he knows either. I let him know and thanks for all your support!" John Higgins wrote in a note last May.

Higgins isn’t the only politician who has an unwitting presence on Facebook.

New York Sen. Charles Schumer doesn’t have a page on the site, but he is the subject of a group that points out his habit of giving essentially the same speech at college commencements and high school graduations across New York.

"Not only did this guy give the same speech at my high school 2005 graduation, but he had the same one at my [Farmingdale State College] 2007 graduation. . . . The guy is lame," one young woman wrote.

A search of Facebook found a number of local politicians on the site.

Rath has 48 friends on his Facebook profile, which notes he’s a fan of the Buffalo Bills and Reynolds, and he’s featured in a number of photos on Facebook.

Rath, who is 40, said his 25-year-old campaign manager, Keith Bryan, urged him to get onto the site last year.

"It’s not going to be just a campaign tool. It’s going to be a communication tool, a continuous communication tool," Rath said.

Nick Langworthy, the campaign manager for McNulty, set up a Facebook profile for the 29-year-old Niagara County legislator during her run for office last year. To reach students who might want to work for her campaign, Langworthy posted an ad that went only to the Facebook networks of several area colleges.

Hoyt’s 241 Facebook friends include singers Ani DiFranco and Lance Diamond, Buffalo Bills players J.P. Losman and Marshawn Lynch and other noted locals.

Hoyt got onto Facebook in October 2006, when he needed to get a crowd of about 1,000 to fill the Town Ballroom for an event for Spitzer and his supporters. He turned to his young staffers and interns for help.

"I said, ‘What’s the best way to get a message out to the college age group?’ They said, ‘Facebook.’ I said, ‘What?’ " Hoyt said. He canceled the event after the October Surprise snowstorm hit.

>Trying to gauge support

Common Council Member Brian Davis has a homemade video on YouTube, thanks to Marilyn Rodgers.

Rodgers posted the video — with scenes from Davis’ East Side district set to the song "Wake Up Everybody" — because she wanted to boost his re-election bid.

"I received a number of e-mails where people were really touched by the video," Rodgers said.

The news that the Facebook page of Rudy Giuliani’s daughter showed her support for Obama — not her father — caused a stir last August and illustrated one political downside of these sites. "I think it’s a really good way to keep in touch, but I think you have to be really careful," said Manley, the Rath volunteer and a Niagara University student.

Can politicians convert online support into something tangible?

"Just because someone joins your Facebook group, it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to translate into something more hands- on for your campaign," said Cole, who has a Facebook profile. "You might have 40 friends, but there’s only three of them who would volunteer for you."

Every candidate is trying to figure out this new technology.

"Social networking is in its infancy in the political realm, and they’re in the growing pains of the technology," said Evan Stavisky, a Democratic consultant in New York City who has worked in Buffalo.

He said that if online friends can’t be mobilized into off-line supporters, then the sites "are like chicken soup for a cold. They can’t really hurt, but it’s an open debate whether they can help."