RealClearPolitics reports: Scott Brown is on the verge of one of the great political upsets in recent memory. And it may have started with a simple hashtag.
Well before many political watchers latched on to his candidacy, the campaign of the Republican state senator was cultivating an army of grassroots supporters online that helped fuel his insurgent effort. Brown has been able to leverage a simmering unease about the nation's direction - even in deeply blue Massachusetts - with the enthusiasm for his candidacy among national Republican activists thanks in part to a new force in electoral politics: Twitter.
On December 28, Brown announced what became the signature force behind his campaign, his pledge to be a 41st vote against President Obama's national health care reform legislation. Accompanying that news on his Twitter feed was this notation: #41stvote. Referred to as a hashtag, those nine characters became a mechanism to attract like-minded activists and identify new ones. Reflecting an enthusiasm gap not just in the state but among national politicos, Brown now boasts more than 11,000 Twitter followers, compared to barely 4,000 for Democrat Martha Coakley.
That following paid dividends last Monday when, aided by a strong Twitter campaign from Brown and dozens of his newest online advocates, the Republican smashed a fundraising goal of $500,000 for a one-day "money bomb," generating instead well beyond $1 million. That total from just 24 hours was well beyond what he had raised in the entire previous fundraising period. Where there had been skepticism before about what kind of impact Twitter could have, the Brown campaign is making a convincing case.
In 2008, the presidential candidates had Twitter accounts and made some use of them, "but the public really wasn't there yet," according to Bill Beutler, innovation manager for New Media Strategies, which advises clients on social media. There were signs of the impact Twitter could have during the gubernatorial and special elections for Congress in 2009, especially in the free-for-all in New York 23. But the midterm elections of 2010 will be the first major national campaign in which Twitter will be a factor, and campaigns and campaign committees have taken notice.
"When I started, everyone joked that I was the director of shiny objects," said John Randall, director of new media for the National Republican Congressional Committee. "This is not a shiny object. This is industry standard now. It's definitely something that I point out to all the campaigns."
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