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Although he's voted Democratic consistently for the past three decades, Bill Gipe hasn't been actively involved in a campaign since the '60s. Since 1968, to be exact, when he campaigned door-to-door to drum up support for the failed presidential bid of Democrat Eugene McCarthy.
Fast-forward to 2003, however, and Gipe, 53, is turning activist again. But instead of knocking on doors, this time he's joining 30-odd Silicon Valley residents at a Starbucks, in San Mateo, California, who are hashing out strategies to spur the presidential campaign of Wesley Clark, the retired general and NATO commander who joined the race two months ago.
Like most of the Clark-supporting latte drinkers surrounding him, Gipe learned about the gathering, organized through the Web service Meetup, by e-mail. He got on the mailing list a few months earlier, after signing a petition by supporters seeking to draft Clark into joining the race for the Democratic presidential nomination. Although he was initially leery of supporting a career military officer, Gipe figured Clark would be preferable to the current commander in chief.
"I don't like Bush and I didn't like his father either," he said, criticizing the second President Bush's decision to wage war on Iraq without the backing of the United Nations. And while a couple hours in a Starbucks won't do much to prevent Bush's election to a second term, Gipe remains hopeful that a nationally coordinated effort could.
While they haven't yet established a network of local "meetups" to rival that of former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, the first presidential candidate to heavily use the service, Clark supporters have managed to muscle their way firmly into second place. As of Monday, the Clark campaign claimed 48,000 subscribers for its gatherings, held on the first Monday of every month.
Although no match for Dean's network of nearly 150,000 meeting subscribers, the number is well ahead of the No. 3 candidate listed on the Meetup website, Dennis Kucinich, with about 19,000 subscribers.
According to Maya Israel, a campaign spokeswoman and former strategist for the "Draft Clark" movement, which began holding monthly meetings shortly after its inception, the number of meeting subscribers has grown exponentially since the general officially threw his hat in the presidential ring in September. Growth has been particularly strong in the South and in Western states, she said.
The online meeting tool is one of several strategies that involve using the Internet to generate interest in the campaign, including the Clark Community Network, an interconnected group of blogs launched last month, and an online fund-raising drive.
Given the well-documented success of Dean supporters in using weblogs, meetups and online fund raising to turn an obscure candidacy into one of the best-funded campaigns in the Democratic race, rivals are taking note. In addition to Clark, a number of other Democratic presidential contenders are rolling out campaign tools influenced by the online initiatives of the Dean campaign.
At the presidential campaign site of Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, complementing the ubiquitous "donate online" feature is a recently added blog with daily updates from the campaign trail and a listing of meetings held across the country.
A similar blog community page links off the campaign site of North Carolina Sen. John Edwards, along with a listing of meeting sites.
The only woman in the Democratic race, former ambassador and Sen. Carol Mosley Braun of Illinois, also recently launched a Meetup campaign in several U.S. cities.
It's not just Democrats, either. Bush supporters are organizing local gatherings through Meetup. However, according to Meetup spokesman Myles Weissleder, these are largely convened solely at the grass-roots level, as the Bush campaign has not signed a formal agreement to use the service.
Weissleder attributes the popularity of the meeting service to nothing more complex than people's desire to talk politics and campaign strategy with people who share their views.
"People are engaging their friends and neighbors. It's not some sort of top-down directive coming from TV," he said.
But for Clark supporters at the coffee shop, the gathering had another draw. It provided a chance to bash the current president before a unanimously receptive audience.
For every word of praise directed at Clark, participants had at least one insult to fire against the White House's current occupant.
Bush-bashing aside, Internet outreach also has been lucrative for Democratic candidates. So far, the Dean campaign, the leading earner, has collected more than $15 million in contributions, a large portion coming from online donors.
A Clark campaign organizer said the general's campaign is hoping to raise $12 million in the last three months of this year, led by online contributors.
Campaign staffers declined to reveal how much they've taken in so far. But Cameron Barrett, developer of the Clark Community Network, credits suggestions from bloggers for getting things off to an admirable start.
Bloggers' latest plan – a fund-raising drive to celebrate the 59th birthday of Clark's wife, Gert Clark – kicked off Monday. Without a bit of effort required from Gert, donations were rolling in at the rate of more than 10 an hour, Barrett said.
