Republican Party of Virginia embraces new media

One of the more popular events at this weekend’s annual Republican Party of Virginia ‘Advance’ in Williamsburg was the workshops discussing new media.

Having been caught behind in last year’s Presidential elections by the Obama team’s superior use of what is termed ‘new media’, the Republicans are making up for lost ground.

No less than three separate sessions were scheduled to discuss the growing phenomenon of ‘blogging’, ‘Facebook’, ‘Twitter’ and the like.

The first roundtable was hosted by Lynn Mitchell, member of the Republican Party of Virginia State Central Committee and blogger at the highly popular www. Swacgirl.blogspot.com. Ms. Mitchell moderated a discussion among leading Republican new media activists and professionals including:

Krystle Weeks – www.crystalclearconservative.com, Jason Kenney – www.bearingdrift.com, Ford O’Connell – www.projectvirginia.com, Vince Harris – www.tooconservative.com and Tucker Martin who was Governor-elect Bob McDonnell’s communications director during the ’09 campaign. Mr. Harris was Bob McDonnell’s new media director.

In a large room packed to overflowing including popular former Governor George Allen, the panel discussed the role of new media in the successful 2009 election of Bob McDonnell and his team and analyzed the use of technology by Team Obama during the campaign. It was noted that the Democrats are still using their outreach and grassroots advocacy via the internet and email list of over 13 million names while in office under what is now called ‘Organizing for America’.

Ironically, this group is working within the Democratic National Committee led by soon to be erstwhile Virginian Governor Tim Kaine.

The Republicans have shown by the landslide victory of November that they have caught up. At the Republican Convention in Richmond earlier this year over 40 bloggers showed up to ‘bloggers row’ and the new tradition continued at the Advance with pundits blogging from the various events. Host Lynn Mitchell joked that she was blogging from podium, taking photos of the gathering during the event.

Tucker Martin said that the Governor-elect, then candidate Bob McDonnell, was ‘extremely aggressive’ when it came to embracing new media and that he recognized that it is not a novelty. Martin said that “social media has gone from niche to necessity.”

It paid off for McDonnell. Vince Harris told the workshop that the candidate had twice the amount of ‘Facebook fans’ as the two New Jersey gubernatorial candidates put together.

Martin, who himself openly admits to not having a Facebook page or a Twitter account, said that there are now over 350 million people worldwide now on the popular social networking site which is more than the entire population of the United States. He went on to say that Facebook is ‘not a fad’ and that ‘you need to be on there.’ This brought gales of laughter due to his own absence from the global phenomenon that is Facebook.

The new media seminars proved the most popular at the Advance proving that the Republican Party is embracing new technology but panelists stressed that it is only a tool and candidates have to have the Right message to sell to the electorate.

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