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Archive for the 'Congress' Category

Building 3121 Awareness, One Impression at a Time

Published by William Beutler on July 28, 2009 in Congress, Hotline, Metapost, New Media Strategies, Social Networking, Web 2.0 and William Beutler. Closed

Note: Longtime readers may remember that I started Blog P.I. just a few months after leaving National Journal’s Hotline for New Media Strategies. This summer I have come full circle and NJ is now a client of NMS. We are helping them launch a new feature of NationalJournal.com: 3121, professional network for Capitol Hill which goes live in the fall. Consider that also my disclosure; the following is cross-posted from the 3121 product blog:

One of the more interesting projects I’ve been working on related to 3121 is the social advertising, which we launched last week concurrent with this blog. In fact, there is a chance that you are reading this blog post now after having clicked on one of these ads. And if you arrived here from Facebook or LinkedIn, then I all but guarantee it. And I know for a fact that you work on Capitol Hill.

In some ways, advertising on social networks is not much different than traditional online advertising: the creative (yes, that’s a noun) consists of text and a graphic, with a link to the page you want people to visit. But they can also identify key demographics with a much greater degree of accuracy than even Google’s Adwords (which we are also using). Members of Facebook and LinkedIn supply their own demographic information, which is great for finding just the people you want and only the people you want.

Want to reach single female college students in Boston, Massachusetts who are fans of Gossip Girl? Facebook counts more than 1,600. How about married thirtysomething men in Portland, Oregon who are fans of The Big Lebowski? More than 600 of them. The possibilities are endless.

In your case, if you do fit the Capitol Hill profile, you probably saw one of the two following ads:

As you may have guessed, Facebook also lets one zero in on just employees of the United States Congress. (How many? At least 7,500.) LinkedIn has a different system but one which is very similar: identify people who work in legislative offices, set that to Washington, DC and we hope you’re someone who is interested in 3121.

Behind the Tweets: PoliticsOnline to Spotlight Congressional Tweeple

Published by William Beutler on March 22, 2009 in Blogger Panels, Blogging Officials, Conferences, Congress, Twitter and William Beutler. 1 Comment

It’s the busy season for Internet conferences, with SXSWi recently concluded,* Personal Democracy Forum just ahead and the District’s own PoliticsOnline annual conference sponsored by the Institute for Politics Democracy and the Internet (IPDI) at George Washington University. I was a panelist once during my time writing The Blogometer, if you need any more reason to take it seriously.

Well, here’s one more — IPDI is announcing a new panel that sounds to this blogger as interesting as anything covered in Austin, Texas last weekend. From the announcement e-mail:

[H]ow many of us have actually looked at the user experiences of Members of Congress, as they work through the highs and lows of social media in political office?

Or asked a Senator what it felt like to post the tweet heard around the country?

Now you can.

Join Senator Claire McCaskill (D-MO), Rep. John Culberson (R, TX-7), Rep. Steve Israel (D, NY-2), Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R WA-5), and Rep. Tim Ryan (D, OH-17) for “Elected and Connected: Uses, Dangers, and Benefits of Being an Elected Official in a 2.0 World” on Tuesday, April 21, 2009 at 8:30 a.m. at the 2009 Politics Online Conference.

As alluded to here before, expectations that our duly elected congresscritters would take to blogging (as opposed to merely commissioning staff-written blogs) never did pan out, owing in largest part I believe to time constraints and authenticity. Then-Senator Obama’s lengthy commentary/response at/to Daily Kos in 2005 may stand alone in this regard, although I still suspect he did not write it alone.

YouTube has generated more member participation but still is mostly the product of their staff. Twitter on the other hand is entirely intelligible and within the capacity of anyone familiar with a BlackBerry, which nearly all of them are. Here, for the first time, members of Congress may actually have something to say about social media. Not to mention, Culberson (@johnculberson) and McCaskill (@clairemc) are widely considered among the savviest Twitter users on the Hill.

All sounds interesting to me, and if you agree, you can register online here.

*So if you were wondering why this blog went silent for a week, now you know.

The Hotline’s Tweetometer

Published by William Beutler on February 26, 2009 in Congress, Hotline, Startups, Twitter and William Beutler. 3 Comments

Before I started working for The Hotline (and before they had a web presence to speak of) the original Beltway tip sheet had a catch phrase: “The word on the street is ours.” This week it looks like they’re going back to the well as they roll out a new feature, because it is called:

Word on the Tweet is a logical extension of On Call’s sister publication and my former vocation, The Blogometer. When we started in the winter of 2005, the blogosphere had just recently gone mainstream, largely thanks to its impact on the 2004 presidential campaign. Here in the winter of 2009, it’s the Twitterverse which has only just hit the big time.

And this is an even easier call for Hotline to decide on covering: The Blogometer covers the blogosphere as an amateur/activist extension of the Beltway media, but no member of Congress has time to sit down and write a blog. Twitter is different: after all, no less a politician than the president of the United States is an admitted BlackBerry addict.

And where most members would formerly have staffers maintain their Twitter account — if they had one at all — more and more are following the lead of Texas Rep. John Culberson and actually tweeting themselves. This participation by actual sitting congresscritters could be a great deal more entertainment, as writer Evan McMorris-Santoro hints in this disclaimer:

Note: all tweets are reproduced exactly as they appeared, grammar/spelling warts and all.

Exactly as it should be. For the announcement video starring McMorris-Santoro and my old boss John Mercurio, click here:

What If They Held a Federal Election and No One Noticed?

Published by William Beutler on December 12, 2007 in 50 State Strategy, 527s, Congress, Daily Kos, Elections, Leftosphere vs. Rightosphere, Local Politics, Midterms '06, Online Fundraising, RNC, RedState, Special Election, Virginia Politics and William Beutler. Closed

Last night Republicans retained two House seats in special elections called to replace members who passed away earlier this year. This morning, Captain Ed led his recap with the observation:

Had the Republicans lost their two special election contests to replace deceased GOP House members, one would see the papers filled with analyses of the coming debacle for Republican hopes in 2008. Now that they have won both handily, expect most to either ignore the races altogether or chalk up the wins to local Republican strength.

Indeed, about the closer-watched Ohio election the Washington Post merely ran an AP story on A02; the Viriginia story ran on B05 in the Metro section. Neither buried, but neither featured. Had Weirauch had won, the anti-Republican mood of ‘06 would seem to be continuing. So it’s kind of funny where the Post chose to cut off the wire report:

But Democrats had high hopes about Weirauch’s chances against the younger Latta. This was her third run for the House, and last year, against Gillmor, she received the biggest share of the vote — 43 percent — of any Democrat in the district’s history.

I noticed the same dearth of barking from the blogs, too. Here’s everything the Memeorandum algorithm deemed significant this morning:

Memeorandum recap of December 2007 special elections

And the whole story was off the page by the beep of twelve.

Daily Kos featured just one recap of the special election, which seemed very bitter even after explaining how the NRCC had spent a big chunk of its cash on hand:

The Republicans are still trying to pretend that 2006 was an aberration. Yet they have to go all-out, it seems, to hold the ground they already have.

Yes, I was hoping for a better performance in this district. Yes, I’m disappointed.

Meanwhile, the RNC’s Jason Richardson said nyah in a post for GOP.com and at RedState, focused not on the party committees, but on the extra-party support apparatus:

Weirauch had heavy support from the DCCC, Daily Kos, Act Blue, Nancy Pelosi, Charlie Rangel, Harry Reid, and EMILY’s LIST. We were severely out-manned in Ohio and Virginia and this is what they have to show for it? We came to the game to win. All in all, the liberal blogosphere should take heed: You’re not as powerful as you think and it’s about results not PR.

To be sure, these were retentions and the Virginia election was never much of a contest. But the Ohio race between Republican Bob Latta and Democrat Robin Weirauch was a focal point of both parties in recent weeks, with both parties’ house committees pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars into the district. Online, Slatecard and Big Red Tent both spotlighted the race and sent out fundraising pleas; Slatecard raised $1,908 from 21 supporters. Meanwhile Weirauch apparently collected more than $93,000 from ActBlue, some $15,600 raised by the Daily Kos/Open Left-backed Blue Majority and $12,300 by Wesley Clark’s WesPAC.

One race was obviously a dud and the other would prove to be one, too. It’s hard to nationalize a special election, and there was no Paul Hackett. In fact, there was barely an Iraq debate — though the Democrat in the Viriginia race, Philip Forgit, was an Iraq veteran. So the leftroots raised more money, but the rightroots (if not Rightroots) ended up with the win. But neither the leftosphere nor rightosphere owns this win or loss. This race just wasn’t won or lost online. And if it was a status quo election, Republicans have to be pleased with that.

Update: I somehow managed to miss Eric Pfeiffer’s understated observation, posted just after the beep-beep of twelve-thirty:

Bloggers Respond With Restraint to Yesterday’s OH/VA Special Elections

At least.

I Want to Work for a 527

Published by Not Paul Begala on March 28, 2007 in 527s, Brick-and-mortar consultants, Congress, Democrats and Elections. 6 Comments

Ask any campaign guy/gal who has multiple races/cycles under their belt and they’ll tell you that most candidates suck.

They don’t work hard, they meddle too much, they say dumb things on camera or they’re just insane. The real fun is the shadow groups — the 527s and 501(c)3s.

Here’s why:

Why is Americans United for Change is running TV ads against the Senate Minority leader in Kentucky? There’s no way in hell Mitch loses; he’s one of the smartest elected GOP political minds and he can easily raise money. But, that ’s not the point. Campaigning has grown into something completely different than winning and losing single elections: It’s now almost sport.

Back in 2002 a group of rich Democrats and consultants got together and said to themselves, “we want influence.” They created this 527, originally, to protect Social Security from the Republicans’ “privatization.” Now, they still have this 527 and still continue to have influence with their money and with their consultants. Somebody just stood up one day and said, “Let’s rip Mitch’s face off!” for probably no reason except that they can.

And that’s the beauty of this for people like me. No candidate, no pressure to win the race, no worry about the candidate’s wife or best friend telling me how to do my job, no grueling travel days and no limiting contact with pesky reporters. Just a bunch of paid professionals sitting around a table making a couple of rich dudes happy.

Sign me up!

Etiquette

Published by Not Paul Begala on March 19, 2007 in Academic Blogging, Congress and Seriously. Closed

You think you might have your cell phone turned off while you’re on the floor of the House of Representatives debating the war in Iraq. Or not:

Listen during the silence. Apparently, the House Chamber is actually a movie theater, and at least one member of Congress is that one guy. And that guy is a jerk. (Via Atrios.)

And don’t miss the chyron about midway through the video:

C-SPAN: Gonzales has Bush's "confidence"

Okay, now he’s toast.