(empo-tuulsey) (empo-tymshft) @SuzanDelBene , @TeamReichert , and reaching new voters

I'm going to start this post by getting all of the FCC disclosures out of the way. First, I was a college classmate of Suzan DelBene at Reed College. (Incidentally, I'll have a little more to say about Reed in a future post.) Second, Dave Reichert's former employer (the King County Sheriff's Office) is a current customer of my employer.

If you haven't heard of either DelBene or Reichert, then you probably aren't interested in Windows Mobile products. Or you're not a cop. Or you don't live in western Washington, where they are the apparent front runners in the 8th U.S. Congressional District in the state of Washington's August 17 primary. (Incidentally, this is a "top 2" primary, so DelBene and Reichert are already competing against each other.)

What's interesting is how both of these candidates are using newer technologies to reach the voters.

Back when Dave and Suzan and I were born, the brand spanking new technology was television. The first 1960 U.S. Presidential debate was just one instance in which the power of the new technology became known. However, this raised troubling questions as more telegenic candidates began to emerge. Would some of our prior Presidents, such as FDR and Abraham Lincoln, been viable candidates in a television age?

Well, the Kennedy-Nixon debate occurred 50 years ago, and now DelBene and Reichart are battling it out online. DelBene advertises her presence on four services:

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Suzan-Delbene/136326264034?ref=ts
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/40904663@N05/
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/SuzanDelBene
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/delbeneforcongress

Reichert has staked his own claims to various parts of the tubes:

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Dave-Reichert/6699231655
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/teamreichert/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/TeamReichert
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/teamreichert

Now the candidates obviously engage in more traditional politicking - Reichert is talking a lot about lawn signs at the moment - but obviously these 21st century technologies are an important part of their communications arsenal.

And perhaps we may eventually find that these new technologies cause a shift in the candidates that we elect, possibly not for the better.

One thing in common between television and the newer technologies is that short is better. Back in the 19th century, politicians may entertain a crowd for hours. Television prefers the soundbite. Twitter and YouTube prefer the shorter conversation. (To my knowledge, neither of the candidates engage in 1-2 hour podcasts. Good.)

One of the previous politicians, even though he would have been a disaster on television, might be ideally suited for the Twitter age. Abraham Lincoln's most famous speech is extremely short - not as short as 140 characters, but certainly in marked contrast to other orations of the time. I could see him tweeting his way through a crisis, though it would be disconcerting to me to see "lol" appended to the end of a Lincoln joke.

After this election is over, we'll have to see how effective the candidates were at using these tools to get their messages out. I believe that both of them realize that these are only tools, and that you need to have a coherent message before you start tweeting or whatever. A tool is not a way of life, and a tool alone won't get you to Capitol Hill.