(Adapted from the Treadway E-mail Alert of 11/15/99. If you'd like to be added to our free
E-mail Alert list, Click here!)
See the update footnote we added as of 4/1/04 at the bottom of this story.
Here are a couple of topics we don't often see overlapping. Now
we see the wave of a new future in political influence and fundraising.
The next presidential election will be the first in a persuasive internet environment. With online penetration of U.S. homes at over 50% by November, 2000 we'll see a heatup on the web for candidates for the next year. The two places to see cyber-changes: fundraising and polling.
Early Indicators of Internet Influence
In one of the more bizarre entries to a web presence Dick Morris (remember the political
advisor who shares secret information from his client Bill Clinton in pillow conversations
with his extramarital companions?) pays $250,000 for the Internet domain name: www.vote.com. Citizens who visit the site are invited to "vote" on various issues. Every time they cast a vote an e-mail message is generated to their Congressional representative and Senator.
Among the active issues on the site as of 11/15/99:
- Should Police Seize Cars Driven by Drunk Driving Suspects?
- Tax the Internet?
- Increase the Minimum Wage?
- Pay Unemployment Benefits to Workers who Stay Home with Newborns?
- Should Congress Ban ATM Surcharges?
- Marijuana as Medicine?
- Should patients be able to sue HMO's?
Dick Scruggs and Steve Bozeman are Vice Presidents, partners, and deep pockets for Vote.com.
They are attorneys in anti-tobacco litigation. They also represented Jeffrey Wigand,
the whistle blower whose life is profiled in film, The Insider.
Two Political Developments
Two developments in the past year and a half have signaled the coming influence of the
Internet in politics. If you've seen presentations I've made you may have seen me present
information about the Ventura election and the credit union victory on H.R. 1151.
Ventura was able to use his website and e-mail to generate a voter turnout in Minnesota
that almost doubled any other state. By pushing a simple, emotional-level message and
appealing to the disenchanted he fooled the predictions by turning out voters ignored by
pollsters including younger male voters.
The credit unions had lost a key Supreme Court decision on whether they could expand their
membership to serve new categories other than the companies or communities where they began.
The banking lobby has been trying to quash the boomlet in credit union usage for several
years, viewing as unfair the fact that credit unions are exempt from taxes and are not
held to the standards of the Community Reinvestment Act. Credit unions, led by CUNA (Credit
Union National Association) pushed H.R. 1151
through congress with 90%+ margins in the most divisive House and Senate environments in
recent history. A huge volume of the grass-roots support for the measure came to the
representatives through credit union member-generated e-mail. The bankers outspent the
credit unions by huge margins during the bill's passage. CUNA jumped from #70 on Fortune
Magazine's listing of the most influential lobbying presences in Washington to the top 10.
Who will the Internet benefit most in the coming election?
Bill Bradley. He's looking for support from many of the same voters that put Jesse
Ventura in office and he's the leading front-runner in the new technique of raising
money on the Internet.
Scorecard
Here's the online fundraising score as of 9/30/99:
- Bradley: $650,000
- McCain: $260,000
- Bush: $90,000
- Gore: 80,000
- Dole: 76,000
- Orrin Hatch: $50,000
- Steve Forbes: $30,000
Tech Companies and the Election
Silicon Valley companies have waded into the presidential election in a significant way.
Through the end of June $850,000 has been contributed directly by high tech companies.
The figure does not include what the telecom industry has contributed or what technology
company execs have sent to the presidential candidates. This is 3 times the amount given
to the Dole and Clinton campaigns in the last presidential contest. Leader: George W. Bush
with 1/3 of the total. Bradley and Gore have about half what was given Bush. Michael Dell
jumped on the Bush bandwagon early and has been recruiting other executives to the fold.
Wired magazine's December, 99 issue takes a one-sided tack on the candidates.
Entitled, "Where's Tech Support When You Need It?" the article is essentially a
paraphrase of Silicon Valley venture capitalist John Doerr and an unabashed editorial
echo of Doerr's support for Al Gore. Passing mention is made of technology company support
for other candidates including Cisco's John Chambers who is backing and organizing for
George W. Bush. One of the best lines in the article speaks to the size of contributions
vs. resources on the part of technology entrepreneurs citing their "deep pockets and short
arms."
Implications
- Politicians may begin actually listening to the high tech crowd. Andy Grove has been advocating that unless Washington wakes up to the fact that
huge segments of the U.S. economy will be impacted by e-commerce and unless the government begins to think in "Internet years" ahead it may
position the country for the same economic problems that occurred when mechanization overtook agriculture in the last century.
- Look for the Internet to take its rightful place alongside massive television spending as the means to influence elections and reach
campaign donors in the future.
- Consider right now how your company, industry, or cause could use the same low-expense tactics as Ventura and the credit unions to influence
lawmakers. If vote.com can send messages to the Hill, so can you.
As of April 2004 this story from five years ago has played out in the extraordinary Internet-based fundraising used by Howard Dean in the Democratic
primary campaign. His unprecedented success in raising money via his website and e-mail campaigns fueled his early run at the nomination.
