IP Democracy: Must-Read: Post-Mortem of Rasiej's Web-Based Campaign

Courtesy of Dave Weinberger, a fascinating account of Andrew Rasiej’s failed bid for New York City Public Advocate, written by his campaign director, Micah Sifry. Tech-friendly Rasiej ran an unconventional campaign, relying heavily on the Internet and the tech community’s ability to help get the word out. Rasiej also promoted the idea of city-sponsored Wi-Fi as a key goal, to the point that it seemed as if all Rasiej wanted to do in public office is work on municipal Wi-Fi efforts.

What’s fascinating about Sifry’s account is its honesty and its in-depth look at the Internet as a political campaign tool. But, even more fascinating is Sifry’s naivete, not unexpected in an idealistic campaign such as Rasiej’s was.

For some odd reason, Sifry thought that Rasiej could count on the volunteer work of an enthusiastic techie work force.

I chalk up our difficulty in mobilizing techies to several factors: 1) the number-two office in NYC is just not of great interest to techies, no matter how innovative the campaign tactics or message; 2) techies are predominantly political independents, or libertarians, and thus hard to mobilize in a Democratic primary context; 3) techies are focused on work, making money, and, for all their complaining about politics, a relatively immature political grouping (compared, to say, Old Media moguls in Hollywood).

Hello….that’s right and anybody who has hung out with tech types for even a few hours could have told Sifry all this at the get-go. Moreover, anybody who has hired a few techies already knows how difficult it is to get them to do something in a straighforward way EVEN WHEN YOU ARE PAYING THEM.

Another seemingly naive move by the campaign: embracing one topic, Wi-Fi, to symbolize everything else the campaign was about — openness, progress, technology, the future. The problem was that Rasiej seemed to offer only one idea for a relatively obscure New York City public office which nonetheless is responsible for the mass of issues any big city must handle. So, Rasiej seemed to be, bizarrely, campaigning solely on the idea of Wi-Fi, instead of, say, housing, or health care for pregnant mothers, or any of the other issues most people consider more pressing in a political context.

Because we needed to punch through with something, we embraced “Wi-Fi”as a symbol of everything we were trying to achieve, issuing a detailed plan to “Wi-Fi NY,” launching an online petition drive and holding a major launch announcement on the steps of City Hall with about 100 supporters and Andrew making a big speech holding a wireless router in front of a podium made of old PC mainframes. The press was happy to label Andrew the “Wi-Fi Guy.” But with that came complaints that now we were a one-issue campaign, and worse that our “Wi-Fi NY” proposal ignored the digital divide and was mainly about making it easier for yuppies to check their e-mail while lounging in Central Park.

Posted by Cynthia Brumfield on November 2, 2005 12:43 PM to IP Democracy