Candidates seek votes in cyberspace

By Nedra Pickler

updated 9:49 p.m. ET April 19, 2007

SECOND LIFE, Virtual World - To find volunteer Redaktisto Noble, you have to go to John Edwards presidential campaign headquarters. Not in Iowa or New Hampshire, but in cyberspace.

There, Noble can lead visitors along a boardwalk lined with billboards describing campaign issues such as Iraq and health care. On the way out, visitors can pick up free "Edwards for President" T-shirts that their animated alter-egos can wear.

It's old-fashioned campaign work in a new setting. Noble works at Edwards' virtual campaign headquarters in the animated online world called Second Life that counts more than 5 million members — many of whom can vote in real life.

Democrat or Republican, the White House campaigns are using new online tools this year in an effort to attract supporters who they hope will give not only their votes, but their time and money to the effort. The technology is new, but not the political chase — candidates want to be where the voters are. And Americans today are spending their time online.

"When the industrial revolution came, candidates learned real fast that they had to go stand at the factory gate," said Joe Trippi, a political consultant who managed the Internet-savvy Howard Dean presidential campaign four years ago. "Why? Because at 5 o'clock when that whistle blew, that's where the workers would be. You're campaigning where the community is."

Which is why you will find every presidential candidate on MySpace, a networking site which counts more than 64 million current members. Visitors to Republican Mitt Romney's page can click and play Elvis Presley's "A Little Less Conversation." Republican John McCain lists "24" as his favorite TV show and "Viva Zapata" as his favorite movie.

Democrat Barack Obama recently became the first candidate to sign up 100,000 MySpace friends. And he has his own version of social networking called My.BarackObama.com that has allowed Virginia mothers Ruthi David and Kulia Petzoldt to become active in politics for the first time.

They formed Families for Obama on Feb. 10, the day the Illinois senator formally announced his candidacy, and they've already grown to 24 chapters nationwide. The say the online tools have allowed them to become engaged and estimate that 80 percent of the chapter administrators are also first-time organizers.

Petzoldt points out that hiring a baby sitter to volunteer at campaign headquarters would have been too expensive and making phone bank calls from home problematic with her toddler screaming in the background. But she hosts regular coffee and campaigning playgroup meetings at her home in Burke, Va., where their children recently babbled and ground Goldfish crackers into the rug while their mothers discussed the text of Obama's Iraq legislation.

The event was advertised on the My.BarackObama.com Web site for anyone in the area to sign up to attend. They also use that site to recruit members, blog and solicit donations. They complement with another site with an easier to remember URL, http://www.familiesforobama.org, where they can also have threaded discussions, share photos, keep a Google calendar of national events and post party guides.

"We were going to get our kids 'Neglected Children for Obama' T-shirts,'" Petzoldt joked. She and David estimate they each spend about 20 hours a week trying to get others excited about putting Obama in the White House.

"I probably couldn't have done this if we weren't doing a lot of it online, the organizing any way," David said. "I've got three kids."

But online activity is no predictor of electoral success. In 2004, Dean generated excitement online as did Democratic Senate candidate Ned Lamont in Connecticut last year, thanks in part to groups such as Meetup.com and MoveOn.org. Both faltered in their election bids.

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