RSS Electronic Edition | Newsletters Subscribe | Customer Service Contact Us | Community Buy Photos Modmomsclub

Columnists - Columnists: Jeff Jardine

Thursday, Oct. 22, 2009

Connected: Modesto candidates use Internet in variety of ways

Some sites aim for voter utility, others are simply informative

E-Mail Print

During the last presidential campaign, Barack Obama played the Internet as masterfully as Itzhak Perlman plays the violin.

Obama used the cyberworld to generate support across the country, to advance his public appearances and rallies and to get his message out. He used it to recruit and motivate younger voters who get the majority of their information online. Perhaps most significantly, he used it to raise money.

And that worked great in a national campaign. But what about in local elections?

How are candidates employing the Internet and to what benefit?

All but two of the seven vying for the three open Modesto City Council seats have Web pages and use social networking sites, including Facebook, Twitter and MySpace.

Kristin Olsen (District 5), Joe Muratore (District 4) and Jeff Perine (District 4) all have campaign Web sites and make use of the various social networks to promote their campaigns and give voters insights into their personal life.

"The average voter age in Modesto is over 60," Olsen said. "It's a way to reach the other segment of the voting population."

Perine has a clever video campaign ad on YouTube, sending police dogs to the polls to vote for a candidate who campaigns as a strong supporter of the Modesto police.

Muratore claims 400 Facebook friends and, if he wins, plans to use it to keep in touch with younger voters.

"I use it to connect with a certain generation at a time in their lives when they are ready to get involved and get things done," he said.

Same goes for District 4 candidate Robert Stanford, who also blogs regularly on modbee.com's The Hive.

District 2 candidate Dave Geer claims to be the least connected among the candidates. He has a Facebook page, but said he didn't create it himself.

"Maybe my nieces in Connecticut set it up," he said. He signed up for LinkedIn, another social network, "because I wanted to know more about (a particular) person," he said.

Otherwise, "I'm not a big Internet social networking person," Geer said. "I don't think it's all that important in my district. These people don't have the time to spend looking at my Facebook account."

Geer's opponent, Al Nava, however, uses Facebook and Twitter to get his message out and to tell people all they need to know about him. He might shun The Bee by refusing to return typical campaign questionnaires or phone calls, but when it comes to online, he's a classic case of TMI (too much information).

Some of his Twitter postings:

• June 27 — "I'm making Politics sexy, cool, & exciting again!"

• May 6 — "Arnold Schwarzenegger wants to legalize Marijuana! Let him know he has our support by emailing his office."

And a Facebook entry:

• "Fox News should be renamed: 'Douche-bag News.' I already have."

This wasn't a case in which someone left a tape recording going and the candidate didn't know it. He generated these Web gems himself.

Stanford, who is a Web page programmer, said the Internet impact has been "pretty disappointing."

"We're an ag town," he said. "Behind the times. People don't look up the candidates on the Internet."

For the past few years, his blog entries on The Hive have at times been highly critical of public officials, including law enforcement, which is his right. But these blog threads — responses to and from other bloggers — often turn into personal attacks.

"The biggest struggle is not to get into the back and forth," he said. "I get baited on there."

If a candidate has Internet skeletons, rest assured someone will find them. Joe Cataline, who is challenging Olsen in District 5, is a 26-year-old photographer whose business, Destiny Productions, mostly involves wedding shoots. On occasion, he's taken other kinds of assignments, including some boudoir-type photography — photos of women in lingerie. He said the women wanted the photos for their husbands.