Net Starting To Change News Habits -- Dec. 16, 1996

Pew Research Center: One in Ten Voters Online For Campaign '96

Political Consultants Hit The Web

By Gene Randall/CNN

Are you thinking of running for office? Do you need a political consultant? Well, fire up your computer and cruise the information superhighway.

Greg Stevens & Company, who helped get two U.S. senators elected in November, is among the choices for Republicans. On Stevens' web page, his current client list includes Sens. John Warner and Mitch McConnell.

Meanwhile, the Strategy Group's list of congressional winners includes Majority Whip Tom Delay (R-Texas).

Democrats can look to Trippi McMahon Squier. Its Web site offers a press review of a biting TV ad it produced for Virginia Senate candidate Mark Warner, in which Warner attacks his opponent John Warner for using a doctored photo.

And the Conover-Millar Group promises emotional positive ads -- and negatives that hit hard. The company also pledges to put campaigns on the Internet.

However, there is little evidence that office-seekers other than presidential candidates attract much attention on the Web. Experts such as Phil Noble, author of the Guide to Politics on the Internet, predict that that's going to change dramatically in the future.

"Twenty five percent of the people who actually voted are on the Internet," says Noble, "and if you have that level of interest in a new medium after only two years, you have got to assume that within four years, it's going to become one of, if not the, dominant medium."

Noble says that campaigns will increasingly search out online voters, and that the importance of the Internet rivals that of television. According to Noble, Internet users are active participants in the election process.

"About 90 percent of Internet users say they register and vote. Number two, they are activists. About 30 percent of Bob Dole's volunteers came from the Internet, as opposed to about 10 percent of the population that has the Internet. Number three, they are a target of the voting public that is very hard to reach through traditional media," Noble said.

In the Virginia suburbs of Washington, David Whitmer markets Internet advertising to Democrats and their causes.

Whitmer put Senate candidate Elliot Close on the web this year in South Carolina. Whitmer says web sites are cheaper and more accessible than standard mail.

"For less than a price of a direct mail piece, a candidate could have a really solid web site, on line, accessible 24 hours a day," says Whitmer.

In exchange, says Whitmer, rather than a steady diet of sound bites, Internet voters will have a much broader information base of candidate information.

Ronald Reagan was known as the "great communicator." Will the next great communicator be the great interactor on the World Wide Web?

Maybe as soon as one campaign can claim a victory based on the Internet. According to Whitmer, that has not happened yet. "But once it does, then campaign managers and candidates will begin to see the power of the Internet."