Sunday, January 11, 2004

The new Zogby poll says John Edwards has momentum in Iowa, and now he's got an endorsement from the Des Moines Register, too. Candidates need at least 15% of caucus votes to get any delegates -- Zogby has Edwards at 13%.   Edwards campaign tools for writing letters to Iowans and coordinating volunteer travel. 5:25:32 PM    comment []

A little background on the promising Win with Edwards online campaign tools for volunteers: "The 51 new sites (the states plus DC) are all bound together by a common backend that was designed to allow local folks to organize themselves and create their own content -- in essence, providing a Get Local tool of sorts for John Edwards supporters just as the campaign is about to kick into high-gear." Edwards booster Mike Kasper gives more detail on the tools: "They were developed by a team of volunteers around the country all working together via emails and phone calls over the holidays. They use eZ publish, free software that lets people who don't know HTML update a web site... The win sites also use Mailman (more GPL freeware) for the listservs. The campaign sent out an email about Winwithedwards.com in December when it was mostly a homegrown PHP/MySQL based directory for supporters to contact each other. I think they are going to link to it from the main johnedwards2004.com homepage soon. From what I hear, many within the campaign are excited about this. It sounds like once the state sites are ready, the campaign will gladly help direct more traffic to it." 10:46:41 AM    comment []

"One candidate who seems serious about the Internet is Erskine Bowles, the likely Democratic nominee for the Senate seat relinquished by John Edwards... 'When it comes to online campaigning, Erskine Bowles is a true believer,' says Susan Lagana, a spokesperson for the Bowles campaign. 'We will definitely be using the Internet to more directly engage supporters in our campaign because this election really is about them. We see how online campaigning breaks down a lot of the barriers that money and television have put between campaigns and grassroots. We want to combine high-tech with old-fashioned grassroots.'" My newspaper column starts with Dean's "bold attempt at human networking" in Iowa, and moves on to the upcoming statewide races in North Carolina. 10:31:53 AM    comment []