by Christina Siebold
posted August 8, 2003
The raucous, brightly-lit interior of this downtown pizza parlor hardly conjures the image of the storied backrooms of hardball politics, and Chattanooga native Stuart Collins hardly resembles Karl Rove, but the 2004 election dominates conversation at this long center table strewn with parmesan shakers and paper napkins.
“Maybe we could talk to groups of senior citizens in retirement homes,” suggests the attractive blonde woman.
“Shouldn’t we be getting more people to sign the petition?” asks the man in the “Draft Clark” baseball cap.
“Our main focus right now needs to be building our numbers so that if and when he declares himself a candidate, we’ll have a good structure on the ground for him,” Stuart Collins says while flipping through pages of campaign research scrawled on yellow legal pads.
Until two months ago, Mr. Collins had never been involved in a political campaign. A self-described moderate, he always voted - for both Reagan and Clinton, he says, not Bush II - but never felt the call to voice his support beyond the ballot box.
All of that changed on the morning of June 15.
“I was at home watching the Sunday news programs, and I saw retired General Wesley Clark on Meet the Press. I was so impressed with him,” Mr. Collins says. “I liked his ideas and felt he had a real vision for the country.”
During that nationally-televised interview, General Clark - who is not yet a presidential candidate - mentioned the website DraftWesleyClark.com, which is raising grassroots support to convince the former Commander in Chief of the United States European Command and former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO to join the nine other Democratic candidates seeking to challenge President Bush in 2004.
After watching the news program, Mr. Collins visited DraftWesleyClark.com and several other sites dedicated to the same goal. “The more I learned about General Clark from the websites, the more I wanted to help,” he says.
And so, this Information Technology Specialist consulted with the founder of DraftWesleyClark.com and then designed his own website - TennesseeForClark.com, in an effort to rally local support.
“Our main goal at TennesseeForClark.com is to consolidate efforts across the state to build support for General Clark in Tennessee’s four largest cities, looking toward the day when he announces,” Mr. Collins says. “At least 80 percent of our efforts right now are through the internet.”
John Hlinko, co-founder of DraftWesleyClark.com, encouraged political novice Stuart Collins to get involved in the movement. Mr. Hlinko is no stranger to politics or internet campaigning. As president of the political consulting firm Extreme Campaigns, Mr. Hlinko specializes in grassroots campaigning. In 1998, he helped lead MoveOn.org, an anti-impeachment petition that generated over half a million signatures and several million dollars in donations.
DraftWesleyClark.com began just three months ago after Mr. Hlinko surveyed the field of Democratic hopefuls, and found them wanting. “I think many Democrats don’t believe the current candidates will be able to deliver the regime change in Washington that we are looking for,” Mr. Hlinko says.
“So instead of getting stuck with the candidates already in the race, we’ll draft our own.”
The group’s first meeting in April consisted of “nine guys around a table in Washington." By June, they had seen modest growth - get-togethers were attended in three or four cities across the country. After General Clark’s June appearance on Meet the Press and organizing Draft Clark meetings through the internet service Meetup, July saw more than one hundred cities host a meeting aimed at drafting the General into the race.
“Without the internet, none of this would have been possible,” Mr. Hlinko says. “We have a great candidate, but no matter how great our candidate, if people don’t know about him, our little movement wouldn’t have gotten off the ground.”
And this internet-driven “little movement” appears to have gotten off the ground nicely. In three months, 30,000 people have sent letters to General Clark through DraftWesleyClark.com, asking, in fact, begging, the General to run. Nearly $370,000 in campaign funds have been pledged to his potential candidacy.
General Clark has himself recognized the work of Mr. Hlinko’s website. In an interview last month with the New York Observer, Mr. Clark said DraftWesleyClark.com was proving to be a “significant influence” on his decision.
“They have really used the power of the internet in a way that I don't think it's been used before,” he said. “I've never seen or heard of anything like it.”
Mr. Hlinko says his website’s influence looks unusual only because political campaigns are just beginning to catch up with the technology the internet has to offer. While John McCain’s short-lived presidential campaign in 2000 made a splash by quickly raising significant amounts of money over the internet, he says neither party’s candidate fully utilized cyber-campaigning.
“The internet is no longer a separate thing kept in a little room to be brought out every once in awhile during a campaign,” he says. “For the ones who are doing it right, it is infused throughout the entire campaign.”
Mr. Hlinko says a big part of the internet’s appeal is its ability to cut expenses. Every fresh idea along the campaign trail should be greeted by one question - “Can we do it cheaper using the internet?”
Slow, labor-intensive mailings can be replaced with email alerts and updates that arrive daily on a supporter’s desktop. They are free direct mailings - and completely user-driven. If a message makes its way into the mailbox of an uninterested party, all they do is hit delete, at no expense to the campaign.
Stuart Collins sends several email updates a day to local supporters through his TennesseeForClark.com site, then asks them to forward the messages to friends and family.
“That kind of word-of-mouth advertising is the best way for us to build a base locally,” he says.
The organizers of DraftWesleyClark.com recently used the internet to host that all-American political extravaganza - the fundraising dinner. This not-quite-black-tie event, dubbed the “fundraising dinner for the rest of us” was auctioned last week on eBay, and consisted of four genuine Army “Meals Ready to Eat” (MRE’s), along with “Clark” bars, and “Draft Clark” mugs. Bidding started at $20.04 (as in, Clark in “2004”) and the high bid topped $1000.
Even traditional advertising in this campaign is internet-based. The popular radio ad touting the General as America’s “dream candidate” -also cited on Meet the Press - was produced and distributed by DraftWesleyClark.com using only the internet.
“We are actively trying to use the internet to influence other media,” Mr. Hlinko says. “We use the internet to make the radio ad and we use the radio ad to make inroads into print and television media.”
While the internet has played the dominant role in rocketing DraftWesleyClark.com to national prominence, Mr. Hlinko says it is this seamless collaboration between different forms of media that will generate the buzz a candidate needs to launch and sustain a competitive campaign.
“It was General Clark’s appearance on Meet the Press that served as the defining moment in the movement,” he says. “Literally within days of that show we received several thousand letters of support.”
Including one from the young man directing tonight’s pizza parlor meeting.
From passive voter to active campaigner in two months, Stuart Collins is a perfect example of the synergy Mr. Hlinko says is possible when a political team successfully integrates both traditional and new media into their campaign.
“The real power of the internet is our ability to engage interested people in an ongoing dialogue,” Mr. Hlinko says. “That ongoing dialogue turns casual supporters into dedicated volunteers, and dedicated volunteers into real evangelists.”
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