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Congrats to Jon Isaacs, 2007 Rising Star...
After each election cycle, Campaigns & Elections magazine names a set of "Rising Stars" - political consultants and managers, all under age 35 - that are showing promise and changing the world.
This year's crop includes our pal Jon Isaacs.
Jon led the Oregon House Democrats for two election cycles, and led them to a stunning victory in 2006 – winning four seats and a 31-29 majority. The Oregon Dems hadn't picked up seats in a nonpresidential year since 1974, and had been in the minority since 1990. Here at Mandate Media, we worked closely with Jon and his excellent crop of candidates in 2004 and 2006.
As the finance director for Bill Bradbury for US Senate, Jon led a general election fundraising operation in 2002 that raised $2.4 million. As finance director for Bev Stein for Governor, Jon's 2002 primary election fundraising operation led all candidates for Governor, raising $1.7 million.
He's now the vice president at Compass Media - a Chicago-based firm that's led the way for dozens of candidates, labor unions, and independent expenditure operations. And, of course, he's a regular contributor at BlueOregon.
Congrats, Jon!
Kari Chisholm | May 29, 2007 | Comments (1) |
The new strategy: give up control, guide the conversation, build your base
In this month's Fast Company magazine, Mathew Gross - internet guru for Howard Dean and John Edwards - describes the evolving strategy of political campaigns in the internet age.
"In the television era of politics, the instinct was very much to control the message, to get the perfect sound bite. With the Internet, I think you have to release control as you do in a conversation.Traditionally, when one politician attacks another, you respond either by attacking back or voicing your outrage that a candidate would stoop to such a level. Now, suddenly, the audience is able to hurl their attacks as well.
Asymmetrical warfare is the perfect analogy, because now the ability for things to go viral is in anybody's hands, and if an attack is coming from a voter, it's no longer a given to simply strike back. There was one video on YouTube of Edwards getting made up for a debate and someone had set it to the song 'I Feel Pretty.' It became pretty popular and was clearly an attack on him.
We thought, 'What's a way we could counteract this? Do we make fun of it?' Ultimately, we decided that in this particular case, it didn't rise to the occasion of warranting a response, but I think that's something all campaigns will have to deal with on an ongoing basis.
It's always a judgment call, but now it requires a new sense of judgment."
Spot on, man.
Kari Chisholm | May 23, 2007 | Comments (0) |
Ed Markey goes YouTube, from the chairman's seat
Pretty sweet.
Kari Chisholm | May 12, 2007 | Comments (0) |
The 12 Laws Every Blogger Should Know
From Aviva, comes some helpful advice about the current state of blogging law.
There's lots of detail there, but here's the 12 topics addressed:
* Whether to Disclose Paid Posts
* Is Deep Linking Legal?
* The Legal Use of Images and Thumbnails
* Laws that Protect You From Stolen Content
* Domain Name Trademark Issues
* Handling Private Data About Your Readers
* Who Owns User-Developed Content and Can You Delete It
* The Duty to Monitor Your Blog Comments, and Liability
* Basic Tax Law Issues in Blogging
* Limited Liability Laws and Incorporating
* Spam Laws and Which Unsolicited Emails are Legal
* Are Bloggers Protected from Journalism Shield Laws
Kari Chisholm | May 10, 2007 | Comments (0) |
Who's Who on the Presidential Internet Teams
The Washington Post has some breathless "aren't they amazing?" coverage of the internet teams for the various presidential campaigns. If you can get past the breathlessness, it's a good roundup of who the players are -- along with some interesting tidbits about integration:
But the Internet touches not just fundraising but also all other facets of the campaigns, including communications and field organizing, and the buzzword that OPOs throw around is "integration" -- how well the online department is integrated with the rest of the campaign and its staff. Everyone agrees that more integration is needed. Not everyone agrees on what it means. ...It is a formulation familiar to Andrew Rasiej, a Democratic online strategist and co-founder of TechPresident, a bipartisan group blog that tracks online campaigning. "Every campaign will tell you that they get the Web, that they understand its power," he said. "But you have to look at where the power lies. How much influence do their online people have? Not much right now. Fact is, most campaigns, on both sides of the political aisle, think that the Internet is just a slice of the pie. They don't realize it's actually the pan." ...
"They're treating me like a mascot," said one online director, who has complained to the close-knit group of online strategists that he is not getting the necessary staffing and money to do his job. "Like it's enough that they hired an Internet guy and that's it."
Kari Chisholm | May 7, 2007 | Comments (0) |
