As a new media professional in Washington DC, one of the things I have enjoyed most about the fledgeling 2010 race for Governor in Maine has been the embrace of new media by prospective candidates, as well as some among the grassroots.

The latter is even more encouraging to me than the former, actually.

I regularly deal with national level political clients from various states, and one thing that has always struck me about the online political presence in Maine vs. other states, has been how completely devoid the Pine Tree state has been in terms of online political activism, news, and opinion.

Granted, there have been online versions of Maine newspapers, and there are a few quality political blogs here (namely Turn Maine Blue and Mike Tipping’s Maine Politics) – but in all honesty, compared to other states who have dozens of high quality blogs on both the left and the right, as well as political news sites, and highly trafficked reporter blogs (Missouri comes to mind, for example), Maine simply didn’t measure up.

That seems to be changing with high quality blogs like The Maine View cropping up all over the place, and I believe it may be a direct result of elected officials putting a bigger focus on new media.

In this race, the Republican candidates have been especially active and innovative, and the Democrats… well, they are barely even playing the game.  Steve Rowe has a very 1998 website and no real cohesive engagement on social media platforms, Dawn Hill is completely MIA and Peter Truman is a ghost as well.  For all intents and purposes, the GOP completely dominates new media at this point, so we will focus on them.

True, sometimes in their zest to generate an online footprint, they perhaps cut a few corners – but overall we have seen a strong presence from all three GOP candidates.  Lets take a look at each, and compare their overall presence.

Websites

Matt Jacobson – Jacobson’s website is very well designed, easy to read, engaging, and welcoming.  He has links to all of his social networks (Facebook, Myspace, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc), as well as a link to his blog, a Flickr account, and right on down the line.  He has a fully integrated new media approach, and the only real weakness of the site is the narrow height of his window pane which sometimes makes it cumbersome to read his information.  But other than that, it is exactly what a web 2.0 website should be.

Les Otten - Well, we will set aside for now the originality (or lack thereof) of the website, and just focus on its functionality and integrated design.  Otten has easily accessable links to his social networks, although the number of them that he employs is much smaller than Jacobson.  Otten only links to Twitter, Facebook, Youtube and his campaign blog, whereas Jacobson also links to MySpace, LinkedIn, etc.  That said it is a classic web 2.0 website, simply with fewer opportunities to network with the candidate.

Bruce Poliquin – Bruce also has a quality website, though it is a more stripped down and simplistic version than the other two.  Like Otten, he does link to several of his social networks, but also like Otten, he only has four (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube) to Jacobson’s six.  Bruce does also have a link to his candidate blog as well, however, so I’m likely splitting hairs here.  Clearly all three of these candidates are making good use of social media.

Twitter

Matt Jacobson – Jacobson’s Twitter presence has been signficantly growing as of late.  He has always held the lead among GOP candidates in terms of followers, but recently he has been dramatically pulling away from the pack.  The Maine View today named Jacobson the new “King of Twitter” in the gubernatorial contest, taking over from independent candidate Alex Hammer.  Jacobson currently has 504 followers, and has been regularly @ messaging supporters, re-tweeting other community members (including yours truly), has made use of hash tags and has been posting campaign material via twitpic.  This is clearly one of Jacobson’s strong suits, and he deserves the title bestowed upon him by The Maine View.

Bruce Poliquin – Poliquin also has a pretty good handle on the Twitter phenomenon.  He doesn’t have the same footprint as Jacobson, but has a very respectable 72 followers – although he is currently following no one, which in Twitter land is not a good thing to do, given that the entire premise of the service is a reciprical connection between people.  I would certainly recommend he starts to follow some people back, even if only a little.  In addition, he has a custom background, so his campaign has clearly made an effort to have a professional presence on the medium.  He has been a little more active than Jacobson in terms of posting updates, and has made use of many of the same techniques.  He regularly makes use of twitpic to keep his supporters up on what the campaign is doing, for example.  He updates followers on what he is doing from his blackberry, so its pretty likely the updates are coming from the candidate himself or somebody very close to him.  He makes good use of posting links, and seems to have a decent grasp of what he is doing.  His weakness appears to be a lack of engagement with the community as a whole (no re-tweets, hash tags or @ messages) and a one way communication strategy.  This will likely evolve with time, however, as his staff figures out what Twitter is really all about.

Les Otten - Les Otten fails at Twitter.  He has zero updates, has no picture, has the default Twitter background, and hauls in only 13 followers.  It is true, he only recently announced and as such should not be reasonably expected to be on the same level as the other two, but when you link to a social network on your main website, it is usually a good idea to have that social network actually up and running and active.  I repeat – zero updates.  Given the large amount of chatter on Twitter itself about Otten (mostly negative), it probably wouldn’t be a bad idea for his campaign to actually, well, use the technology.

Note on Democrats – Steve Rowe does actually have a Twitter account, but it is almost as useless as Otten’s.  He has 99 followers, and does not follow anyone back (again, major faux pas in Twitter land).  He has only two updates, and still has only the default Twitter background.  Hey, at least he has a picture.  Still, its obvious he doesn’t consider the technology worth the bother at this point.

Facebook

Matt Jacobson – Everything that somebody can do on Facebook appears to be done by Jacobson.  He has a main Facebook page (601 friends) as well as a fan page (377 supporters) and a Jacobson for Governor group (11 members).  He has linked his Twitter updates into his personal status update feed (nice touch), and regularly updates the fan page.  Facebook is highly integrated and used well by the campaign.

Bruce Poliquin - Another savvy Facebook user, Poliquin may not have a fan page, but does have a strong main Facebook account (243 friends) and a well trafficked Poliquin for Governor group (217 members).  He may not have quite the following as Jacobson at this point, but does have a very strong base of support that he uses effectively.  It probably would be a good idea for him to create a fan page as well, as it is a very handy tool for politicians.

Les Otten - Much like his Twitter presence, Les Otten apparently has no use for Facebook.  He has no picture, no activity, and no friends.  The only activity he has on the medium is becoming a fan of himself.  Again, this may be a matter of him just beginning his campaign, but once again, if you are going to link to something, it is a good idea to have it actually functioning.

Note on Democrats -Steve Rowe does have a fan page (593 supporters), but that’s it.  He has good reach and pretty decent engagement.

Conclusions

There are obviously other networks – LinkedIn, YouTube, etc, but Twitter and Facebook are the big two.  If you look at the others, the same trends seem to hold true.  For example, Jacobson is an active user of LinkedIn (143 connections), and will actually personally respond to you if you send him a message, while the other candidates either don’t use it (Otten) or have a good base, but a smaller footprint (Poliquin).  Jacobson’s Wikipedia article is clearly the most comprehensive, while Otten’s is disjointed and Poliquin does not have one.  I could go on, but you get where I’m going.

Overall it is clear that Matt Jacobson’s campaign has an extremely strong grassroots new media component, Bruce Poliquin is also doing a pretty good job, and up to this point Les Otten is going through the motions but isn’t really delivering much.

There are other candidates in this race as well, and Steve Rowe may not be “in the game” as much in terms of social media, but he does have a good start that he can build off and turn into something positive.  Alex Hammer has an extremely bizzare online footprint that is more notable for his underhanded and somewhat maliciously petty activity (example:  Wikipedia vandalism to promote his campaign), and none of the other candidates are even on the radar.

New media is huge, especially in a state like Maine where it can organize the small, often disconnected and rural communities into a single movement.  Its clear that some candidates understand this, and others are coming around.  It will be very interesting to see how this new media revolution developes in the Pine Tree state over the next two years.

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