Campaign Journal Two

For the second installment of the Campaign Journal, I will look at the Delaware gubernatorial race. Though not a particularly competitive race, it is the only one of the four races I am following that had in addition to the major-party candidates had two independent or third-party candidates. This race also lets us look at the through the lens of Michael Margolis and David Resnick authors of Politics as Usual.

Margolis and Resnick propose that though there is potential for the internet to create a forum in which all candidates and party can have equal access to voters and can provide the content needed for informed voters, the realities of money, campaign strategies, voter behavior and political self-interest will trump the altruistic potentials of the web. The Delaware gubernatorial race will allow for an examination of the campaign web site presentations of the candidates and their issues. In this race, there is no incumbent (current governor is term-limited)—though the Democrat’s (party of the out-going governor) nominee could be viewed as such since Delaware has had a Democrat in the governor’s office for the past 16 years—and there are two third-party (Independent Party of Delaware (IPOD) and the Blue Enigma Party) candidates.

One characteristic of the Margolis and Resnick model is that campaign web sites will become more standardized or “normalized,” this is evident on the campaign sites of the two major-party candidates—Jack Markell (D) and Bill Lee (R). Both sites use a patriotic red, white and blue color pallet, with a banner art containing the Delaware state flag. Both sites have prominent buttons for “about,” “issues,” “news,” “contact,” “supporter sign up,” “events” and “donate,” and both sites utilize multimedia in the form of video on the home page. Though Margolis and Resnick also state, the inequality of financial resources will limit the ability of third-party candidates to produce highly designed and technologically sophisticated web sites. The web site for the Blue Enigma Party illustrates this prediction, as the standardization of the content is not evident. In the case of the Blue Enigma Party, the web site is a true “brochure” site. The web site provides very basic information about the party, its platform of issues, a short uninformative biography of their candidate for governor (Jeff Brown), a generic link to email the party, and an external link to declareyourself.com, a voter registration site.

Further, the web sites of the major-party candidates illustrate Margolis and Resnick prediction that standard offline campaign practices will dictate online content and practices. On of these practices is in the branding of the candidates. On Markell’s site, his logo labels him as the “DEMOCRAT FOR GOVERNOR,” as the Democrats have held the office for 16 years it make political sense to identify ones self with the incumbent party; Bill Lee, as the Republican, makes no partisan claim. Secondly, the Markell has not been diligent in updating the information on his site, the last update was September 10 announcing that he had won the Democratic primary and he has not listed any upcoming event. Bill Lee’s site has been updated with news since September 10, but he is updating his event calendar. This would suggest the challenger, Bill Lee, is trying to create interest in the race, where as the de facto incumbent, Jack Markell, is keeping race interest low to take advantage of the fact that low voter interest and election day turn out favors the incumbent. These two strategies—party ID and controlling information flow—are clearly from the traditional offline campaign playbook; the goal of campaigning is to win the election, it is not to enlighten voters or promote better democracy.