e.politics: online advocacy tools & tactics

Online-Only Politics in Texas? Find Out More on Thursday

May 12th, 2010

Here’s an event that challenges one assumption that underlies a lot of what you’ve read on e.politics:

Paper-free Politics: How the Internet Replaced Traditional Outreach in the TX Governor’s Race

In the early primary campaign season of 2010, things seemed oddly quiet in Texas. In a heated primary battle, Texas Republicans did not get a single phone call, saw not one yard sign, and had no canvassers knocking on their doors — at least not from incumbent Governor Rick Perry.

But Perry wasn’t off the radar. He was online. Are paper political campaigns a thing of the past? Join the PdF Network on Thursday, May 13 as Ryan Gravatt, of Quicksilver Internet Solutions, shows us what campaigns can learn from Perry’s experiment in online-only campaigning.

Sounds interesting, and you can find out more here about listening in on the presentation. Frankly, I’m skeptical about the widespread applicability of online-only campaigning, since the prevailing successful model focuses on the integration of online and offline politicking. And in this case, Perry’s opponent (Kay Bailey Hutchison) had pretty much imploded by the time the race got running. The real test? If Perry sticks to his online-only strategy in the face of a strong opponent in the Fall — and this former Texas Democratic political staffer (for one) hopes that Bill White WILL be a strong opponent.

– cpd