Wednesday, October 7, 2009

Race To Richmond Heats Up Online

With less than four weeks to go in Virginia's gubernatorial race, supporters for Democratic candidate Creigh Deeds have turned the Internet into a digital battlefield. On Wednesday, the Democratic National Committee's Organizing for America effort e-mailed hundreds of thousands of voters in the Commonwealth to lay out the differences between the Deeds and Republican Bob McDonnell. The DNC also unveiled a same-day advertisement on popular social network Facebook that draws attention to McDonnell's "far right wing social views... including that women should not work outside the home."

The ad will appear on Facebook accounts in Virginia wherever McDonnell's name appears and will link to a site called BobMcDonnellBluePrint.com. The DNC said this is the first in a series of planned ads that will target women, young people and other voters. Last month McDonnell rallied prominent female backers to help mend his image after the publication of his 1989 master's thesis. In it, he wrote that working women and feminists had been "detrimental" to the traditional family and slammed federal child care tax credits because they encouraged women to be employed outside the home.

Deeds has a Facebook fan page with 11,595 supporters while McDonnell's Facebook page has 21,887 supporters. The Deeds for Virginia campaign, which runs BobMcDonnellBluePrint, has also paid for targeted ads on Google. A simple search for "McDowell" displays a sponsored ad linking to the site. The text of the ad reads: "See How He Has Enacted an Extreme Social Agenda Throughout His Career." A Google search for "Creigh Deeds" turns up an ad for his campaign site as well as an ad for McDonnell's campaign site with the text "Best Leader for Virginia."

A Google spokesman said the Virginia campaign has been one of the most innovate state-level races to date. Right after the Washington Post published the McDonnell thesis story, both sides launched rapid-response ads and since then they've volleyed back and forth on the Web, on YouTube and on TV. In the primary, Deeds employed what's known as a "network blast" to get his ads up in front of everyone on the day before and day of the election. McDonnell himself has been innovative, becoming the first gubernatorial candidate ever to run his campaign ads in a big way on YouTube (through pre-roll ads).