Presidential blogging

The Wall Street Journal ran an article on the impact of blog advertising on the Presidential race (by Amy Schatz).

Nearly a year before the first caucuses and primaries take place, the 2008 presidential campaign advertising war is under way online. Candidates of both parties are already buying space on search engines, blogs and other Internet sites popular with political junkies and potential donors... This early in the primary season, presidential contenders historically just compete for campaign staff and money. This year, they competing for online support as well.

Then the article got into the nitty gritty of the meaning of "support."

In Nevada, which hosts an early primary in 2008, some local bloggers groused that the Clinton campaign focused its advertising dollars with Las Vegas-based blogs and ignored the rest of the state. "Where's my ad?" huffed one Nevada blogger, Taylor Marsh, who wrote on her site on Jan 22 that she found it "a little annoying that Clinton's team thinks that people like me don't merit advertisement, simply because our numbers don't reach the one-hundred thousand mark." Mrs. Clinton's camp tried to smooth over the Nevada mess by promising to buy ads on different blogs during future rounds of online ads.

Frankly, I don't care about making money off this thing. I blog because I enjoy it (even when I'm getting tattooed) and think it's useful, so want to continue. But the article did get me thinking... why not contact all the Presidential candidates (excluding myself, of course) and ask them if they'd like to post a guest blog? I mean, I doubt they would do anything specific to Cheshire or even our electorally-irrelevant Great State of CT! But they may start sending out some canned blogs? So why not try?

Then I began my investigation. I tried to find the websites of the 19 or so un/official candidates. As well, I looked for email addresses. This is what I found:

Republicans
Tommy Thompson (Gov, WI)
info@tommy2008.com
http://www.tommy2008.com/Contact.aspx
Jim Gilmore (Gov, VA)
http://jimgilmore08.com/
info@gilmoreforpresident.com
Sam Brownback (Sen, KS)
http://www.t-worx.com/Default.aspx?alias=www.t-worx.com/brownback
Mike Huckabee (Gov, AR)
http://www.explorehuckabee.com/site/PageServer
information@explorehuckabee.com
Mitt Romney (Gov, MA)
http://www.mittromney.com/
info@mittromney.com
Rudy Giuliani (Mayor, NYC)
http://www.joinrudy2008.com/
contributions@joinrudy2008.com
John McCain (Sen, AZ)
http://www.exploremccain.com/
(This was the most attractive website by far.)
Ron Paul (Rep, TX)
http://www.ronpaulexplore.com/
mail@ronpaulexplore.com
Duncan Hunter (Rep, CA)
http://www.gohunter08.com/
Tom Tancredo (Rep, CO)
http://www.teamtancredo.com/
Tim White (Council, CT)
http://TimWhiteFellOffHisRocker.blogspot.com
TimWhite98@yahoo.com
Newt Gingrich (Spkr, GA)
http://www.draftnewt.org/
DraftNewt@DraftNewt.org

Democrats
Bill Richardson (Gov, NM)
http://richardsonforpresident.com/
Tom Vilsack (Gov, IA)
http://www.tomvilsack08.com/
Barack Obama (Sen, IL)
http://www.barackobama.com/
media@barackobama.com
John Edwards (Sen, NC)
http://johnedwards.com/splash/
Chris Dodd (Sen, CT)
http://www.chrisdodd.com/home
Joe Biden (Sen, DE)
http://www.joebiden.com/
Hillary Clinton (Sen, NY)
http://www.hillaryclinton.com/
info@hillaryclinton.com
Dennis Kucinich (Rep, OH)
http://www.denniskucinich.us/

The results disappointed me. Fewer than half of the candidates have contact email addresses available on their website. And while I found an email for Rudy, it appears as though he only wants to hear from you, if you're giving money!

OK... in fairness to all the candidates, I think they all had those annoying "fill-out-the-form-and-we'll-contact-you" web pages. But that wasn't what I was looking for. I just wanted an email address. And by them not offering that, I got annoyed. So...

I'm only going to contact the candidates who had email addresses readily available. Then I'll tell you who responds and maybe we'll even get something that can be posted. I'd love to think that they'll respond.

Tim White
(unofficial) Presidential candidate