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Note To Sen. George Allen: Get A Blog

Dick Wadhams, the campaign manager for Sen. George Allen, thinks The Washington Post is out to get his candidate. That allegation prompted Marc Ambinder, my National Journal colleague at Hotline On Call, to wonder what Allen might do to bypass that media filter.

Here's a thought for Allen and Wadhams: Get a blog like your opponent, Democrat Jim Webb. Blogging is one way for candidates to take their messages straight to voters and even combat bad press when it surfaces. Granted, few candidate blogs are worth reading regularly -- and some not at all -- but if done right, they're a great communications tool.

You might try another approach, too: Engage like-minded bloggers to get them behind your campaign. Let them bash the Post for you. Hold conference calls with them. Grant interviews to bloggers. Write entries for their sites and respond to readers when you do. Hire a blog expert to connect with online activists. Those are the kinds of things smart candidates already are doing.

When Democrat Coleen Rowley came under fire last week in her Minnesota House race because of a volunteer blogger, the campaign responded to the charges within traditional media. But the volunteer in question also used the campaign blog to write a fuller account of what happened from his perspective. No newspaper or television station ever would have granted him that much space or airtime to tell his side of the story.

So far, blog strategies appear to have worked best for challengers like the three who defeated incumbents in primaries last week. But that's because incumbents are reluctant to be innovative. They play it as safely as they think their seats are -- a strategy that arguably just burnt Sen. Joseph Lieberman in Connecticut's Democratic primary.

A little online innovation might have done wonders for Lieberman had he acted before perceptions of his candidacy took firm root among his Democratic constituents.

Now for a warning to Allen and any other incumbents who might decide to play politics in the blogosphere: Don't pay bloggers without disclosing that fact.

Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., tried that two years ago. (Wadhams was his campaign manager at the time.) So did the political action committee of Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., earlier this year. Those episodes now rank as exhibits A and B about how not to engage the blogosphere in a political campaign.

UPDATE: Hotline On Call reports that Allen's team is seeking a "conservative blog maven" in light of last week's bad press.

Posted by Danny | 08:39 PM

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