WASHINGTON (By
Andrew Romano,
Newsweek)
May 14, 2007 —
Joe Rospars, a Howard Dean Web
strategist, was at Vermont HQ when he got the bad news. The calls came
from co-workers who'd flown out to Iowa, a week before the 2004
caucuses, to help. Sure, they said, Dean's Net team lured 8,000
supporters to the Hawkeye State. But once those volunteers descended,
things got painfully low-tech. They highlighted voter lists, cut them
into pieces and glued like-colored strips on new sheets of paper. Using
these scraps to walk the precincts, they wound up knocking on the same
doors over and over. Iowans were irritated—and so was Rospars.
Three years later, Rospars has
emerged as one of a core group of Dean Internet staffers using the
lessons of '04 to help '08 contenders do better. The hope: that smart
Web 2.0 tools, stronger candidates and a more-wired electorate will
enable their new clients to succeed where Dean failed—in winning the
White House. As Barack Obama's new-media director, Rospars is one of
three Dean alums involved in the senator's online ops; three others work
for John Edwards, including, as of April 19, Dean campaign guru Joe
Trippi. "This year, there are no excuses," he says. "The Web will affect
this election more than any other medium."
Obama and Edwards have already
unveiled '08's most advanced sites, according to a Hotline poll of Dem
Internet insiders. Next up: testing whether all that Web 2.0 tech can
win votes. Obama's goal is internalization. After Dean lost, Rospars
founded tech consultancy Blue State Digital, which made a
social-networking tool called Party Builder for the DNC. He's repurposed
it as My.BarackObama.com. By corralling supporters within the walls of
the campaign, it overcomes a major Dean struggle: organizing activists
scattered across external sites like Meetup.com. The site, run by
Facebook founder Chris Hughes, lets Obama fans create profiles, plan
parties, blog and (of course) raise money. But under the hood, it helps
the campaign monitor events, spot local leaders and connect would-be
activists.
Dean alums Mathew Gross and Ben
Brandzel are focused less on harnessing energy for Edwards than
generating it. In March '03, Gross launched Dean's campaign blog—a
first. Now senior adviser to Edwards's e-team, he strives for a similar
sense of openness. Edwards's site boasts a community blog and links to
23 external social networks, while the in-house social network, One
Corps, emphasizes activism over elections. The appearance, says Brandzel,
is of a "movement" with supporters as "agents of change." "We have to
rely on the people to get good at spreading the word," he says.
Both approaches have their pitfalls. In February, two
Edwards bloggers provoked controversy after posting inflammatory entries
on their personal blogs. (Both resigned.) Two weeks ago, Rospars,
seeking more control over Obama's MySpace presence, commandeered an
unofficial, 160,000-member Obama profile run by a supporter. The move
generated bad buzz. Such are the risks of navigating this frontier—not
that Dean alums are discouraged. Trippi is focused on YouTube; his first
video, which debuted May 2, strings together uploaded clips of
supporters opposing the Iraq War. Obama's new MyPolicy program asks
voters to submit issue proposals, which Rospars says will be
incorporated into Obama's platform. "Open source" policy is a nifty
idea, but will it help on the ground? Rospars doesn't know. "Beware of
anyone who tells you this isn't all experimentation," he says. "They're
definitely lying."
