More candidates are using digital media to campaign and connect with their constituents

The primary is Tuesday, and the signs are everywhere -- at least all over the Internet.

Candidates are increasingly turning to digital and social media as a way to reach out to voters.

The primary ballot features contests for everything from the U.S. Senate seat now held by Richard Burr to a whopping 26 candidates for the Forsyth County Board of Education.

Among the school-board candidates, for example, at least 17 have some kind of Web presence.

Five of the seven candidates on the primary ballot for the county board of commissioners also are on the World Wide Web -- six if you count a site devoted to "people who strongly dislike Forsyth County Commissioner Walter Marshall."

In general, incumbents are less likely to have an Internet presence than challengers. That doesn't surprise Allan Loudon, a professor who teaches political communication at Wake Forest University. Incumbents are likely to feel "pretty secure," he said.

On the other hand, Loudon thinks that with people online in ever greater numbers, a candidate "has to follow in terms of social networking."

"Web ads are everywhere," he said. "They are relatively cheap, and you can target core constituencies."

But even as they turn to new media to get out their messages, candidates said nothing will ever take the place of face-to-face contact.

"I like that one-on-one experience where you knock on the door and see the person and they tell you that these are the things they would like me to do," said Gardenia Henley, who is running in the Democratic primary for District 72 in the N.C. House.

Henley has a website, a Facebook page and a Twitter account, although she admitted she hadn't checked that one lately. Twitter refers visitors to Henley's Facebook page.

"I haven't looked because I've been out there knocking on doors," Henley said.

Henley is running against Rep. Earline Parmon, the incumbent Democrat, who is on the Web and Facebook. Parmon bought a package deal that gave her print advertising plus 50,000 online ads that are targeted to Yahoo! users here.

"I have an e-mail blast, but I'm not on Twitter," Parmon said.

It's the first time she's used online media to reach voters.

"I realized that many people are not reading the newspaper, even on the Internet," she said. "People are doing e-mails on the Internet. The way to get people to know who you are is to follow those mediums."

New media for reaching people

New media allow candidates to reach people -- especially the young -- whom they might not reach through traditional channels, Parmon said.

Parmon was quick to add that it doesn't mean candidates can spend less on traditional advertising or get less wear and tear on their shoes.

"I did print media, both the daily and local papers," Parmon said. "I have billboards. I have probably put out $500 in signs. I've knocked on hundreds and hundreds of doors."

Parmon, like other candidates, both Democratic and Republican, saw what the Internet could do by watching President Obama's 2008 campaign.

Nathan Tabor, the chairman of the local GOP, was paying attention.

"Howard Dean kind of started the social-media side, and Barack Obama pretty much mastered the online," Tabor said. "Where you saw the majority of that was against Hillary Clinton. She had the old media of direct mail and phones. It costs $50,000 to mail brochures to 100,000 people. To e-mail 100,000 people costs $1,000. It doesn't take much math to figure that out."

Tabor's company, TCV Media, has the capability to send out a million e-mails in an hour. In the recent health-care debate, Tabor's company identified 27 "on the fence" members of Congress and sent out 2.7 million text messages.

Text messaging -- sending messages over a cell phone -- is the next big political thing, Tabor said.

Is social media important for local campaigns? Tabor said the answer is "yes and no."

"If the Facebook is simply used to say, ‘Here I am as a candidate,' it is not effective," Tabor said. "If they put out there, ‘Let me know how you feel,' and ‘What do you think -- should taxes be raised?' … the success of social media blogs is that people's voices can be heard."

Social media turns campaigning into a two-way conversation between candidate and voter -- perhaps the biggest change it has wrought, Tabor said.

"Up until this time, political candidates had a one-way conversation," Tabor said.

Apology made for Facebook post

Posts to Facebook can backfire. In March, Paul Johnson, a Republican and the chairman of the Surry County Board of Commissioners, referred to Democrats Robert Nickell and Ric Marshall using the term "dumbass." Johnson quickly took the posts down and apologized to both men, who accepted.

But the comment had already gone "viral" -- making it onto other sites and into in-boxes through screen grabs and forwarded e-mails.

"I think we abuse the privilege to have access to Internet information," said Donald Mac-Thompson, a professor of political science at Winston-Salem State University. "A candidate running for office is automatically a public figure and should be quite aware or very cautious about what he or she says. It is like opening a Pandora's Box when these kinds of things get started."

Fleming El-Amin, the chairman of the local Democratic Party, called candidates without a Web presence "dinosaurs," but added that candidates can't go to the other extreme and leave behind tried-and-true campaign tactics.

"Never rely on just that alone," he said. "One parallel would be trying to date someone on the Internet and never meeting the person. Candidates need to go face to face and door to door, and kiss some babies. It is very effective."

wyoung@wsjournal.com
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Election Day

The polls open at 6:30 a.m. and close at 7:30 p.m.

To find your polling place, go to journalnow.com and click on Election 2010. Early voting ended yesterday, with 2,471 voters casting ballots in Forsyth County, according to Rob Coffman, the county elections director.