How valuable is the internet in political races really, especially in Mississippi?
Lt.Gov. Phil Bryant, the presumed front runner in the governor's race, has the weakest presence of anyone I have examined. He apparently doesn't have a Twitter account, and I can only find his governor campaign Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/pages/Phil-Bryant/149191811767085 from his govenor campaign website. http://www.philbryant.com/ His regular lieutenant governor Facebook page is easy enough to find, but it doesn't even link to his campaign page.
On Facebook he announces who is supporting him and comments on things in the news, like the open meetings law improvements, but he doesn't dialog with voters, which would seem to be the greatest value of a social media account.
A week ago, Phil was getting a lot of shots on Twitter with no apologists over his redistricting stand.
A little background: The Mississippi Legislature is in the throes of an ugly redistricting fight that pundits have been predicting will get resolved only in court. Every 10 years states have to redraw their voting districts to accommodate changes in the census. The state House passed its new plan and sent it to the state Senate. The Senate rejected the House's plan and sent the Senate's plan for the House as well as the Senate's plan for the Senate to the House for approval. The House rejected the Senate version of the new House plan. Normally, when both houses can't agree on a bill they have a conference committee where they work out their differences. The House leaders said they won't go to conference.
Lt.Gov. Phil Bryant, who as lieutenant governor is leader of the Senate, has led the charge against the House redistricting plan. For a while, he was getting a lot of criticism over his role in the whole thing.
This week, however, Twitter seems to have cleared away the debris of recent weeks, and Phil has very few negative tweets about him. Search phil bryant and phil bryant gov on Twitter to see for yourself.
So even though, he has not been responsive and even though he is not on Twitter, he doesn't seem to be suffering. I guess the proof will be seen on election night, but sometimes I wonder if we aren't throwing a bucket down an empty well. Phil obviously knows the voters and how to run a campaign, maybe for right now, in Mississippi, the internet is really not as important in politics as we may think it is.
Think about it.
Monday, March 21, 2011
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
Phil, Phil, Wherefore Art Thou
The Republican nomination fight in the Mississippi governor's race is already getting interesting.
Phil Bryant, Mississippi's lieutenant governor, is generally seen as the frontrunner. He has served as lieutenant governor for the past eight years. Before that, he was state auditor -- another statewide race. And I think he may have been a county elected official or a legislator for a short time. The point is that he has been elected to statewide office at least three times and has some experience as a politician on the local level as well. In that time, he has managed to get himself pretty well entrenched with the Mississippi Republican party. So you have got to give him the edge -- he has the name recognition, the experience, the party connections and the statewide network. And he seems pretty smart, at least politically.
I don't know Phil, although I met him once.
He has a presence on the internet and on to some degree social media. But the thing that strikes me and surprises me a bit, given his political saavy, is that he doesn't seem interest in a dialog. He doesn't have a Twitter site, and he is taking a lot of shots on Twitter, particluarly in regard to the redistricting dust-up. The state Senate under Bryant's leadership has rejected the house redistricting plan, and Phil has developed his own plan. It apparently is costing him with the Republicans as well as the Democrats. Check out the Twitter feed. http://twitter.com/#!/search/phil%20bryant. I don't know if he is unaware of the criticism or if he just doesn't monitor Twitter, but this would be a great opportunity to address some of these criticisms. He could link to a web site where he could define and explain his position. It would seem a wasted opportunity.
He has two facebook pages. One is his official Lt. Governor site, which looks to be mostly about lieutenant governor stuff http://www.facebook.com/#!/profile.php?id=1228376235, but the other is his campaign facebook page.He has almost 4,000 likes on it, but again he has a lot of people asking questions and being critical. http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Phil-Bryant/149191811767085?sk=wall , and he doesn't respond. It seems to me to be a huge oversight because Dave Dennis "ain't going to sit on his hands."
Phil also has a web page, a YouTube presence and a Flickr presence. They are all well done and connected to each other and offer opportunities to volunteer and give money, but to me they seem to emphasize the fact that Phil is not engaged in a dialog with voters.
Compare that with Dave Dennis' internet presence. Dave is on Twitter with 445 followers. In the interest of full disclosure, I am following Dave but only because I want to try to see both sides of his conversations. Dave's dialog is on a pretty minimal level, but he is engaged. He hasn't responded to some people who have asked his stands on some issues on Facebook, but he has started to engage voters.
So will any of this make a difference in the primary? Is Phil guessing right that there aren't enough voters plugged in to the internet to make a difference? Will Dave be able to use the internet to put a dent in his name recognition deficiency? Certainly we will all be watching this one.
Phil Bryant, Mississippi's lieutenant governor, is generally seen as the frontrunner. He has served as lieutenant governor for the past eight years. Before that, he was state auditor -- another statewide race. And I think he may have been a county elected official or a legislator for a short time. The point is that he has been elected to statewide office at least three times and has some experience as a politician on the local level as well. In that time, he has managed to get himself pretty well entrenched with the Mississippi Republican party. So you have got to give him the edge -- he has the name recognition, the experience, the party connections and the statewide network. And he seems pretty smart, at least politically.
I don't know Phil, although I met him once.
He has a presence on the internet and on to some degree social media. But the thing that strikes me and surprises me a bit, given his political saavy, is that he doesn't seem interest in a dialog. He doesn't have a Twitter site, and he is taking a lot of shots on Twitter, particluarly in regard to the redistricting dust-up. The state Senate under Bryant's leadership has rejected the house redistricting plan, and Phil has developed his own plan. It apparently is costing him with the Republicans as well as the Democrats. Check out the Twitter feed. http://twitter.com/#!/search/phil%20bryant. I don't know if he is unaware of the criticism or if he just doesn't monitor Twitter, but this would be a great opportunity to address some of these criticisms. He could link to a web site where he could define and explain his position. It would seem a wasted opportunity.
He has two facebook pages. One is his official Lt. Governor site, which looks to be mostly about lieutenant governor stuff http://www.facebook.com/#!/profile.php?id=1228376235, but the other is his campaign facebook page.He has almost 4,000 likes on it, but again he has a lot of people asking questions and being critical. http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Phil-Bryant/149191811767085?sk=wall , and he doesn't respond. It seems to me to be a huge oversight because Dave Dennis "ain't going to sit on his hands."
Phil also has a web page, a YouTube presence and a Flickr presence. They are all well done and connected to each other and offer opportunities to volunteer and give money, but to me they seem to emphasize the fact that Phil is not engaged in a dialog with voters.
Compare that with Dave Dennis' internet presence. Dave is on Twitter with 445 followers. In the interest of full disclosure, I am following Dave but only because I want to try to see both sides of his conversations. Dave's dialog is on a pretty minimal level, but he is engaged. He hasn't responded to some people who have asked his stands on some issues on Facebook, but he has started to engage voters.
So will any of this make a difference in the primary? Is Phil guessing right that there aren't enough voters plugged in to the internet to make a difference? Will Dave be able to use the internet to put a dent in his name recognition deficiency? Certainly we will all be watching this one.
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
Run Lisa Run
Tonight we take a respite from Mississippi politics at the suggestion of our esteemed professor, Kristie.
I will talk about Sen. Lisa Murkowski, the senior senator from Alaska, and her re-election.In November she pulled off a feat that is nothing less than amazing -- for the first time in 56 years -- only the second time in history, Lisa won a senate race as a write-in. She lost the Republican Party primary to Joe Miller, darling of Sarah Palin (also a big name is Alaska politics) and the Tea Partiers. She said she didn't want to run in the general election as an independent because she always has considered herself a good Republican, so at the urging of some friends and probably more than a little fire in her belly, she launched a write-in campaign. That means that in order to win the election, more people had to write her name down on the official ballot than voted for either of the other candidates.
There were enough plots and subplots in that Alaska senate election to keep "Days of Our Lives" in scripts for another 40 years. I am sure we will start seeing books on it by this summer.
As you can imagine, she really had to work. Not only did she have to convinve people to vote for her, she also had to go to the trouble of getting them to write her name in on the ballot, and Murkowski isn't the world's easiest name to spell. That also involved educating the voters about how to write-in her name and to make sure they knew how to spell it. To make matters worse, Alaska is a very big state, and the population centers are scattered.
Luckily, everyone in Alaska already knew her. But that didn't mean the way was easy. A friend of Lisa's, Mary Deming Barber who is also a public relations professional, talked about the campaign in her blog http://barbergp.com/374/this-election-was-personal-for-me/.
Suffice it to say, Lisa had a pretty strong social media presence. You would think that social media is a godsend for Alaska -- a way to connect with people in a large, sparsely populated area. Four Twitter accounts carried her name -- one is her official senate page, one is her campaign page, one "Write-in Lisa" was put up by supporters without an official affiliation with her, and one "Murky Murkowski" was put up by Joe Miller. Joe, of course, put it up to discredit her record and it had some links to websites pointing out their differences. Her Twitter accounts each have hundreds of followers.
She has two facebook pages. Her senate facebook page has more than 5,000 likes. She has two websites, http://lisamurkowski.com/main/ and http://murkowski.senate.gov/public/.
She is also on Flickr and YouTube.
I didn't find a blog, but one that I just couldn't find may exist.
All of these have connections and announcements and discussions of her stands on the issues and all of the media reports of her work in the Senate and her record and her campaign. Anyone who wanted to see her during the campaign could certainly find her public appearances. She even posted a calendar. She had to get out her message, and she couldn't afford to miss anyone. While I wasn't in Alaska during the race, my guess is that she took advantage of every medium available.
According to Mary Deming Barber's blog, there was a lot of social media in this race. I think you can see that from the "Murky Murkowski" Twitter account. In another of her blog posts, Mary Deming Barber
http://barbergp.com/394/liar-liar-pants-on-fire/says that they monitored Twitter and
Facebook comments and had to pick whichcomments needed responses.
My opinion on the campaign: Lisa won because the people knew her and liked her and because she campaigned hard and because she mobilized all those people who liked her but were too complacent to vote in the primary. She said that she lost the primary because she took it for granted and didn't campaign hard. But the key was that the people love her. People will not vote for someone they dislike. They may vote for a person they don't know very well, but they won't vote for someone they dislike. Social media is great for connecting with people, but it has limits. At some point you have to be who you are, and social media can't help if people know who you are and don't like you.
So for all you Alaskan office seekers: don't run against Lisa Murkowski and try to be friends with her because the people in Alaska like her.
Next time I will get back to Mississippi. I have just started looking at Phil Bryant's presence, and I still want to take a look at Billy Hewes. I also need to check back on Dave, and Haley has stirred up a lot of hate and discontent on Twitter. There is lots to talk about. Besides you have some pretty interesting Democratic Gubernatorial candidates as well.
I will talk about Sen. Lisa Murkowski, the senior senator from Alaska, and her re-election.In November she pulled off a feat that is nothing less than amazing -- for the first time in 56 years -- only the second time in history, Lisa won a senate race as a write-in. She lost the Republican Party primary to Joe Miller, darling of Sarah Palin (also a big name is Alaska politics) and the Tea Partiers. She said she didn't want to run in the general election as an independent because she always has considered herself a good Republican, so at the urging of some friends and probably more than a little fire in her belly, she launched a write-in campaign. That means that in order to win the election, more people had to write her name down on the official ballot than voted for either of the other candidates.
There were enough plots and subplots in that Alaska senate election to keep "Days of Our Lives" in scripts for another 40 years. I am sure we will start seeing books on it by this summer.
As you can imagine, she really had to work. Not only did she have to convinve people to vote for her, she also had to go to the trouble of getting them to write her name in on the ballot, and Murkowski isn't the world's easiest name to spell. That also involved educating the voters about how to write-in her name and to make sure they knew how to spell it. To make matters worse, Alaska is a very big state, and the population centers are scattered.
Luckily, everyone in Alaska already knew her. But that didn't mean the way was easy. A friend of Lisa's, Mary Deming Barber who is also a public relations professional, talked about the campaign in her blog http://barbergp.com/374/this-election-was-personal-for-me/.
Suffice it to say, Lisa had a pretty strong social media presence. You would think that social media is a godsend for Alaska -- a way to connect with people in a large, sparsely populated area. Four Twitter accounts carried her name -- one is her official senate page, one is her campaign page, one "Write-in Lisa" was put up by supporters without an official affiliation with her, and one "Murky Murkowski" was put up by Joe Miller. Joe, of course, put it up to discredit her record and it had some links to websites pointing out their differences. Her Twitter accounts each have hundreds of followers.
She has two facebook pages. Her senate facebook page has more than 5,000 likes. She has two websites, http://lisamurkowski.com/main/ and http://murkowski.senate.gov/public/.
She is also on Flickr and YouTube.
I didn't find a blog, but one that I just couldn't find may exist.
All of these have connections and announcements and discussions of her stands on the issues and all of the media reports of her work in the Senate and her record and her campaign. Anyone who wanted to see her during the campaign could certainly find her public appearances. She even posted a calendar. She had to get out her message, and she couldn't afford to miss anyone. While I wasn't in Alaska during the race, my guess is that she took advantage of every medium available.
According to Mary Deming Barber's blog, there was a lot of social media in this race. I think you can see that from the "Murky Murkowski" Twitter account. In another of her blog posts, Mary Deming Barber
http://barbergp.com/394/liar-liar-pants-on-fire/says that they monitored Twitter and
Facebook comments and had to pick whichcomments needed responses.
My opinion on the campaign: Lisa won because the people knew her and liked her and because she campaigned hard and because she mobilized all those people who liked her but were too complacent to vote in the primary. She said that she lost the primary because she took it for granted and didn't campaign hard. But the key was that the people love her. People will not vote for someone they dislike. They may vote for a person they don't know very well, but they won't vote for someone they dislike. Social media is great for connecting with people, but it has limits. At some point you have to be who you are, and social media can't help if people know who you are and don't like you.
So for all you Alaskan office seekers: don't run against Lisa Murkowski and try to be friends with her because the people in Alaska like her.
Next time I will get back to Mississippi. I have just started looking at Phil Bryant's presence, and I still want to take a look at Billy Hewes. I also need to check back on Dave, and Haley has stirred up a lot of hate and discontent on Twitter. There is lots to talk about. Besides you have some pretty interesting Democratic Gubernatorial candidates as well.
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