Digital Mudslinging

As the 2006 elections near, smear tactics are going high-tech in a bid to sway Net-surfing voters

by Douglas MacMillan

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Negative campaigning is nothing new during election season. But it has taken on a whole new digital dimension this year. In heated races around the country, candidates are finding new ways to bash opponents through social networks such as MySpace (owned by News Corp. (NWS)) and with new tools such as the online video site YouTube, which wasn't even around in the 2004 election.

And the more the sites grow in popularity, the more efficiently and cheaply a candidate can get a message across. "The nature of the Internet allows for some amount of anonymity, your message spreads around a lot quicker than a debate speech or a TV ad, and there are no regulations by the [Federal Election Commission]," says Julie Barko Germany, deputy director for George Washington University's Institute for Politics, Democracy & the Internet.

Witness the YouTube effect on the Senate race in Virginia between George Allen, the Republican incumbent, and Democratic challenger Jim Webb. Allen held a comfortable lead over Webb until one of Webb's camera-toting aides captured footage of Allen making a racial slur during a campaign stop in Breaks, Va. The incident was quickly posted on YouTube, where it temporarily held the site's No. 1 ranking and swiftly gained national notoriety. Allen has since taken a steep drop in popularity among voters. A seat Republicans previously counted as a sure thing has now become the focus of a hotly contested race.

Microsites and Belly Laughs

Online aspersions can be particularly effective when they're draped in humor. A lot of Net surfers are more likely to forward a video clip or flock to a site if there's a guffaw in the payoff. "Negative campaigns work and that's why people always do them," says Rebecca Donatelli, chairwoman of Campaign Solutions, a consulting firm that coordinates online campaigns for Republican candidates. "But if you're going to say something negative, you should try to do it with a sense of humor."

Campaign Solutions is working on behalf of Republican Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, creating a series of microsites aimed at needling Santorum's opponent, Bob Casey Jr., a Democrat. "The point was to poke fun at Bob Casey and to raise some ire," she says. Campaign Solution's Detective Site and Western Site, both of which can be accessed from WheresCasey.com, use playfully themed graphics to drive home what Santorum believes to be Casey's Achilles' heel: a history of conspicuous absence from public dialogue.

Virginia Davis, spokeswoman for the Santorum campaign, says the microsites have worked particularly well with a younger demographic. Along with profiles on MySpace, Facebook, and videos on YouTube, she says interactive components of Santorum's 2006 campaign targeted constituents age 18 to 35 by "appealing to people who think politics are boring." Not to be left out of the online political scene, Casey has a sleekly designed Web site with a focus on different ways to take action, such as recruiting friends and writing to news editors.

From a Distance

In California, polls show that State Treasurer Phil Angelides lags well behind Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in voter support—but that's not stopping Angelides from tapping a variety of experimental online resources. The challenger set up BSBuddies.com, a site where users play an animated game of building their own personalized Schwarzenegger action figure. The game is designed to focus on what Angelides considers a poor Schwarzenegger record on issues such as education. "Too Cool for School" Arnold, for example, promises to "raise tuition and fees" and "cut financial aid by two billion dollars."