MN-01 candidates and their online friends

The Rochester Post Bulletin has published Candidates use Internet to reach voters, a lovely story about using the Internet.

We were charmed by this passage:

"For Davis' campaign for the 1st District U.S. congressional seat, Facebook and MySpace are being used to mobilize young, potential voters.

"The under-40 crowd reads it a lot more, and it's just another way to communicate to folks, and it is a way to build up the grassroots network," said Brad Biers, Davis' campaign manager."

That reference to the Davis campaign's "use" of MySpace especially curled our toes. Our delight derives from the fact that the "Brian Davis for Congress" MySpace page, linked at the bottom of the PB article, reveals that the smirking Doc Davis and his campaign have exactly two friends this evening.

We've saved a screen shot in order to document the moment.

One of Davis's two friends is "Tom."  When we click on Tom's photo in the Brian Davis for Congress MySpace page, we learn that Tom  is 32, male, and lives in California. We also learn:

I'm Tom and I'm here to help you. Send me a message if you're confused by anything. Before asking me a question, please check the FAQ to see if your question has already been answered.

I may have been on your friend list when you signed up. If you don't want me to be, click "Edit Friends" and remove me! . . .

In short, Tom is the default friend everybody gets when he or she signs up at Facebook. As a consequence, Tom has 239,816,139 friends. Readers must judges for themselves how active Tom is in promoting Davis's ambitions.

The other friend is 29-year-old Melissa, from Fredericksberg, Iowa, who works for Victory Enterprises, a political consulting firm Davis hired. According to his Q2 FEC report for the period that ended on June 30, the Davis campaign owes Victory Enterprises  two sums: $ 8725.35 and $ 5696.14, both for "Campaign Materials/GOTV Consulting."  The larger amount, $8725.35, also appears on his Q1 FEC report for the period that ended March 31.

That's it.  Maybe there's more action happening at Davis's candidate Facebook page or at his campaign  Facebook page. The Post Bulletin reporter apparently didn't know about both the candidate and campaign pages.

The candidate page lists 80 supporters. The Brian Davis for Congress page has 93 members. There's one wall post, and some videos, photos and press releases.

Senator Day doesn't have either a MySpace or a Facebook page.

Walz? His candidate page has 1,376 supporters, like the article says. There are 218 wall comments. A couple of fan photos. There's a bit less action here, but vastly largely numbers than Davis has.  Tim Walz for U.S. Congress! boasts 500+ members.

However, perhaps the best barometer for measuring the difference might be to recall the upstart Walz's campaign's experience with Facebook organizing in 2006. Led by the brilliant National Merit scholar Nick Burkhart, Walz's campaign Facebook group had 500+ members by the time KAAL-TV reported on the story on July 25, 2006.

It's quite a contrast. At the same point in the campaigns, fewer than 100 people have signed on with Davis. Two years ago, over 500 had joined Tim Walz's group. (Gutknecht, too, had a Facebook group, though  two summers ago it attracted numbers closer to those Davis now enjoys.)

How ironic that the Post Bulletin article was published, exactly two years to the day as the earlier story. How unfortunate that the PB readers aren't provided with the contrast between the two challengers' campaigns---only with Mr. Biers braggadico.

Comments

[Jeff Rosenberg]

Well, Tom did say he was there to help. Maybe he'll make a few phone calls for Davis! :-)