Forget political stump, mayoral candidates go online for votes

The battle begins most days by breakfast with a tweet.

“Shutting it down after a long day … no hands unshaken … starting again @ 7am!,” Atlanta mayoral candidate Glenn Thomas wrote on the Web site Twitter shortly after midnight Thursday.

Another candidate, City Council President Lisa Borders, made her first entry around 9 a.m. that morning.

“Reviewing [public] works, watershed, aviation, [information technology] and procurement in budget MTG,” she wrote. “Come to City Hall and have your voice be heard, I am listening.”

Welcome to the cyber campaign — where Atlanta’s mayoral candidates are using social networking Web sites like Facebook and Twitter to get their message out to potential voters, explain their positions and generate buzz. The candidates are relying on these sites even more with campaign cash to pay for television and radio ads and billboards expected to be in short supply this year.

“This will be the Facebook election,” said Emory University associate professor Michael Leo Owens.

Four candidates — Borders, Councilwoman Mary Norwood, state Sen. Kasim Reed (D-Atlanta) and Thomas, a former city employee — each have pages and videos on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

Candidate Rod Mack, who works in logistics, has a MySpace page that plays the Sam Cooke classic “A Change Is Gonna Come.”

“We all need to be there,” said Norwood, whose staff took her cellphone one morning a few weeks ago to replace it with a BlackBerry so she can send Twitter updates. “Outreach every way we can.”

The candidates have staffers and volunteers who spend much of their time working these sites, and watching the sites of their opponents to see what they’re up to. Sometimes, the campaigns confess, it’s the staff – and not the candidate — who post the actual tweets.

Owens, who teaches classes on urban politics and public policy, has seen the online race heat up in recent weeks.

“I constantly get these requests to join [a candidate’s] fan page or be their friend,” Owens said. “I think [the candidates] … are looking at who their friends are and who they’re fans of and sending friend requests.”

Reed is well ahead in the Facebook friend race with more than 4,000 friends. As of Sunday morning, Reed and Borders were neck and neck in the race to have the most Facebook fans. Each had more than 1,100. On Twitter, Borders has more followers than any candidate. Her total was 749 by noon Sunday.

Borders has hired a young, three-member team from the firm Relate Media Group to help manage these sites. Campaign officials credit the sites with helping raise 15 percent of its contributions and producing ideas on hot-button issues such as funding for MARTA.

“If you don’t have social media, you are living in the Web 1.0 world,” said Jon Birdsong, Relate’s chief marketing officer. “It is a fundamental shift in communications.”

The political power of social networking became evident last year through the candidacy of then-Sen. Barack Obama, who used Facebook to gain support and build up excitement about his presidential race. America learned his choice for a running mate via text message.

The pages also break news. Owens said he learned that Borders was returning to the campaign through a friend’s Facebook update. Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff on Wednesday accidentally sent a message on Twitter with revealing details of his yet-to-be announced U.S. Senate campaign.

Reed’s campaign manager, Tharon Johnson, said the sites have helped raise money and find volunteers. But Johnson stressed Reed will not forgo traditional campaigning, noting that there are still plenty of people, particularly seniors, who don’t have Internet access.

“There’s no substitute for direct voter contact,” Johnson said. “But what has happened is you have got to do both.”

Johnson has learned by surprise the power of social media. Johnson called a friend one Saturday last month to say he’d be late to a get-together because he was at a campaign event. The friend already knew.

“He knew where I was at because he saw Kasim’s Twitter update,” Johnson said.