AP reports on the first significant advertising buy of the 2006 Governor’s race: Deval Patrick’s purchase of $50,000-$100,000 of internet advertising. The ads are slated to appear on sites like boston.com and cnn.com, as well as blogs – in fact, there will be a Patrick ad running on this very site by tomorrow. Interesting. I had been thinking just yesterday that maybe the Patrick campaign should start buying advertising – it has a huge advantage in not having to devote all its resources to marshaling delegates for the convention, and it should make the most of that. I was thinking in terms of some TV time – say, for a soft-focus “I’m Deval Patrick and I’m running for Governor” spot that introduces him to the voters – but maybe that’s just too expensive at this point. I hope the internet ads are worth that much money – does anyone know whether internet ads really work?
In other internet news, the Patrick campaign has launched an innovative “community” tool which could prove quite interesting. Here are the instructions, taken from Patrick’s website:
The basic steps are:
1. Create an account.
Simply enter your information to look yourself up with the form below, confirm your support and you’re off. (If you had an account on the Deval Patrick Caucus tool, you can use that same email address and password in the Existing Users form to the right.)
2. Look up friends and family.
Once you have an account, you can look up other people you know in Massachusetts.
3. Get them to join you in supporting Deval.
Talk to your friends to get them to support Deval, and, once they are a supporter, you’ll be able to email them a link they can click to confirm their support and join our community.
4. Track your progress.
You’ll be able to see your list of who you have gotten to support the campaign, and compare yourself against others. You will receive a windmill icon on your homepage for each new supporter you sign up, and cool prizes for the more people you sign up.
5. Be ready.
You’ll be relied on to help spread the word and message of the campaign as well as our communication efforts.
To “confirm your support” in step 1, you have to click a box saying that you pledge to vote for Deval Patrick in the primary in order to register an account. And, if I correctly understood what John Walsh said earlier today in a conference call officially announcing DFA’s endorsement of Patrick’s candidacy, once you register you will have access to the Patrick campaign’s voter database – meaning, presumably, that you’ll have address, phone number, and maybe email addresses for pretty much every registered voter in the state. Whereupon you are encouraged to work your powers of persuasion upon your friends and neighbors so that they, too, will sign an electronic pledge to support Patrick.
It’s really quite an interesting idea – in effect turning the voter database into an open source document, at least among the community of committed Deval Patrick supporters (or those who are willing to say that they are in order to gain access to the database). I wonder a bit if there are privacy issues – voter registration records are public, of course, but they don’t include phone numbers or email addresses. And it appears to be quite easy to create an account under someone else’s name (though I haven’t tried to do so) – expect to see a couple of purported Patrick supporters with email addresses at “HealeyCommittee.com” and “MassGOP.com“. Nonetheless, this one bears watching.
Finally, as we noted last week, Democracy for America has endorsed Deval Patrick. Its official announcement went out today. I found it rather amusing. Here’s the description of Patrick’s background in the DFA email:
Deval has more than two decades of experience in the business, government, and non-profit communities. He joined the NAACP Legal Defense Fund in 1983 where he focused on protecting the right of every American to vote. After more than a decade at the NAACP, Deval was appointed by President Bill Clinton to be Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights. During his tenure in the Clinton administration, Deval took a lead role in the administration’s efforts to reduce hate crimes. One of his proudest accomplishments was bringing life to the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Notice something missing? Like, any hint of what Patrick’s experience in the “business community” might be? Like, any mention that he worked for Coke and Texaco, two of the largest corporations in the world, or that he has served on various corporate boards including Ameriquest’s parent company, or that he ever worked for a private law firm? Don’t get me wrong: I like those credentials. What I don’t like is that DFA seems to be afraid of them. If DFA can’t bring itself even to mention Patrick’s many years of experience in the real world of business and high-powered corporate law, presumably because it either doesn’t think those credentials matter or because it thinks it will scare people off by mentioning them, how serious can DFA really be about expanding the base of the Democratic party?
That fake video from Amy Gorin, co-chair of the Deval Patrick for Governor campaign, pretending to be run-of-the-mill supporter “Amy G.” is still up. Maybe they should hire Brian Conrady to help out as election day draws closer.
David,
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I agree it’s a shame DFA missed an opportunity to point out an important part of Patrick’s credentials.
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He was appointed by a federal judge to go in and clean up Texaco’s hiring practices, which he did. They were so impressed with him, they offered him a job (sort of like the way he got into the Clinton Administration after suing the Governor of Arkansas over some voting rights violations).
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He then went on to do the same at Coca-Cola, and helped Ameriquest reform their lending practices.
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With corporate bad guys so much in the news these days, it’s refreshing to have a real do-gooder running for office here in Massachusetts!
is why DFA’s stupidity about this is so annoying. I thought it was funny at first, but the more I think about it, the more pissed off I get about it.
Malice may attack it,
Ignorance may deride it,
But in the end, there it is.
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Winston Churchill
into the mansions……..”But in the end there it is””
I wonder a bit if there are privacy issues – voter registration records are public, of course, but they don’t include phone numbers =snip=
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Sure they do. Not every person’s phone number, but many. In fact, on a voter reg form, entering your phone number is optional and you can check “unlisted” if you like.
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I have the voter reg database for Brookline, Pct 1. Lots of telephone numbers on it.
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Email addresses, that’s another story. No idear.
It’s really quite an interesting idea – in effect turning the voter database into an open source document, at least among the community of committed Deval Patrick supporters
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Whoa! I’ve been out of touch with the Deval Patrick campaign for a long time now, but when they were just setting up (before he announced) I used to go to their office a lot. And… this is exactly one of the things I was pushing for! I’m very pleasantly surprised to hear that they’r doing it!
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We had some long conversations about it and they had all the concerns you’d imagine about privacy, about opponents getting access to their data, and so on. If they’re doing what I recommended, then they’re actually setting up either two separate databases, or a tag in their main database to mark which records are available to the grassroots. Grassroots organizers who sign up for the database and are in contact with the campaign such that someone at the campaign knows who they are personally, can be granted access to the full data. You wouldn’t be able to get access to the internal database anonymously, just by registering your support online – they’d have to actually know you on a one-on-one basis and make a decision to grant you access. But anyone who signs themselves up would be able to opt whether to make their contact info more generally available to others who sign up, which makes it possible for supporters to contact each other to organize locally.
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Again, I haven’t been in contact with the campaign much since last summer and I don’t know how exactly they’re doing this, but from what you write, it really sounds like what I advocated for back then. I hope it is.