Candidates fighting it out in cyberspace

By BOB VON STERNBERG

Eighteen months before the next presidential election, long before the various candidates even begin registering in most voters' minds, a crowded, noisy campaign is raging in cyberspace.

Every major candidate has staked out a chunk of real estate on the Web, offering everything from biographies and position papers to screensavers and kids' games.

With roughly a million potential voters turning to the Internet for the first time each month, the 2000 race is shaping up as the first presidential election that could be significantly affected by the Net.

"The fact that they're all beginning to use the medium means that in 2000 you can't have a serious campaign without a serious Internet presence," said Phil Noble, president of the Politics Online consulting service and Web site. "Anyone who doesn't take it into account would be like the precinct leader in 1960 saying that television thing isn't going to matter in the election."

One reason to believe that this is more than hype spun by a Net-head is living in the governor's mansion in St. Paul, Minn.: Jesse Ventura's campaign last year is widely seen as the first in the nation in which the Internet gets credit for contributing to victory.

Noble's Web site even has a section called "Jesse Watch," where he dissects Ventura's use of the Web. "Jesse's people knew how to use the Internet, how its structure works," Noble said. "Artistically, linguistically, the site stunk, but that's not the point. They created an organizing tool for their supporters with this one-to-one communications medium."

Phil Madsen, who was Ventura's Webmaster, explained that the Internet was an absolute necessity for the cash-strapped campaign. "We spent $600 start to finish on the whole thing," he said of the Web effort. "We didn't have any of the bells and whistles. We're living proof that content is the point of the Web."

Steven Clift, chairman of Minnesota E-Democracy, a nonpartisan political Web site, said he believes Ventura's Internet campaign may have won him as much as 3 percent of the final vote - enough to put him over the top.

"Don't have any illusions that this is going to create a revolution, but if some third party emerges next year with a strong candidate and uses the Internet actively, it could definitely throw the balance of the race," Clift said.

Which brings the focus back to the 2000 campaign. Ranging from Alan Keyes' technologically primitive site to Steve Forbes' state-of-the-art one, all of the Republican and Democratic aspirants have poured resources onto the Web.

To a greater or lesser degree, they share these common elements: detailed position papers on issues, biographies of the candidate and the candidate's family and interactive features such as e-mail, electronic newsletters and volunteer sign-ups. Some have photo galleries, video and audio clips of the candidates. And most have a red-white-and-blue motif.

"They all look awfully familiar," said Rob Arena, Webmaster for Bob Dole's 1996 campaign. "There's a lot of duplication out there and everyone's copying off of everyone else's."

Most of the sites "do what good Web sites do - give voters what they want on the Net, lots of information in detail," Arena said. "If you put it up there, they'll read it."

Candidates' use of the Web was almost nil as recently as the 1994 election and was still fairly negligible in 1996, Noble said. "So it's pretty amazing that in six years it's gone from non-existent to playing a real factor," he said.

Even two years ago, though, the traffic yielded some impressive numbers. By Election Day, Arena said Dole's site had attracted 15,000 volunteers and an e-mail list of 70,000 people. "Now, we've got three times as many computer users nationwide, so those numbers could easily reach a few million next year," he said.

So far, the candidates have engaged in almost no negative campaigning on the Web. That hasn't prevented pranksters from putting up bogus Web sites that mock or lampoon candidates. Some are satires of the real things (and happen to be pretty funny).

But none of that is the big deal about Internet politics, Web experts said.

The big deal is the qualitatively different way campaigns can interact with potential voters by way of the Web. The e-mail links, virtual town hall forums and other forms of feedback "give you one-to-one communication with the voter in a more widespread way than you've ever had," Nobles said.

Forbes has pushed interactivity the most, creating what he has dubbed "'e-precincts," which could allow the campaign to gather thousands of names provided chain-letter style by volunteers and supporters.

"It's easier to campaign online than on the ground," Madsen said. "You don't need the headlines and media coverage every day in a world where everybody has the ability to communicate with everybody at no cost."

The relative cheapness of running a Web site - no more than a few thousand dollars a month - could level the playing field between rich and poor campaigns, theoretically giving them equal access to potential supporters.

Money figures in one other interactive element of Web sites: online fund raising. Most allow supporters to make campaign contributions with credit cards, a fund-raising tool that got a boost last month when the Federal Elections Commission tentatively approved matching dollars for credit card donations, which has long been forbidden.

"That's a very important symbol from the FEC that legitimizes the Web as a ... real part of American politics," Noble said.

For all the attention paid to Web politics, some dissenters have branded it as much ado about not very much. One is Curtis Gans, who heads the Committee for the Study of the American Electorate. He argued recently that "there is nothing in the Internet that provides a solution to what ails American politics. And it may even make matters worse."

Gans said a study last year found that only 6 percent of American adults visited any Web site relating to the 1998 elections, contending that the Web's effect on the 2000 election is likely to be negligible. And the solitary nature of Web-surfing is likely to discourage political involvement - not increase it, he said.

Not so, said Arena. "After the '96 election, we found that something like 89 percent of people with Internet access voted, so that can only grow," he said. "Before '96, people really didn't know how to use this. You're going to see people get involved through the Net and have an impact on the election."

** Here's a list, compiled by Nando, of Web sites for contenders, either announced or likely, for the presidency:

DEMOCRATS

BILL BRADLEY: www.billbradley.com/.

AL GORE: www.algore2000.com/.

REPUBLICANS

LAMAR ALEXANDER: www.lamaralexander.com/.

GARY BAUER: www.bauer2k.com/.

PAT BUCHANAN: www.gopatgo2000.org/.

GEORGE W. BUSH: www.georgewbush.com/.

ELIZABETH DOLE: www.edole2000.org/.

STEVE FORBES: www.forbes2000.com/.

JOHN KASICH: www.k2k.org/.

ALAN KEYES: www.keyes2000.org/.

JOHN McCAIN: www.mccain2000.com/.

DAN QUAYLE: www.quayle.org/.

BOB SMITH: smithforpresident.org/.

This list omits some minor candidates for both parties, as well as some Republicans and Democrats who might still join the fray. For more presidential sites, including those of a dizzying array of independents and minor-party contenders, see www.politics1.com/p2000.htm.

Copyright © 1999 Nando Media
Copyright © 1999 Scripps Howard News Service
(June 6, 1999 12:34 a.m. EDT http://www.nandotimes.com) -

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