Campaigns.com: Mayoral candidates head to Web

BROCKTON — Online donations. E-mail blasts. YouTube.

For political campaigns, these Internet tools are quickly becoming as normal as meet-and-greets and holding signs. And the candidates for mayor of Brockton are tapping all of them in the run-up to the Sept. 18 preliminary election.

Candidates Jass Stewart and Gayle Kelley have posted videos on the popular site YouTube, while both Stewart and incumbent Mayor James Harrington accept donations through their Web sites.

All three candidates send out “e-mail blasts” to their supporter lists on a regular basis.

“It's important that we make certain that everything we do can get to different kinds of people in different ways,” Stewart said.

One recent e-mail alerted Stewart's list to a new campaign commercial that is not only appearing on cable networks, but has also been posted on YouTube.

Kelley's YouTube video features clips from her campaign kickoff last month. There are plans to post more videos this week from recent events, including clips of cheering supporters outside last week's mayoral debate, according to campaign coordinator Stephen Sidorak.

But even just having an informative campaign Web site is growing in importance as people spend more time on the Internet, Sidorak said.

“We have gotten more hits (on the Web site) than we would've ever hoped for,” he said, noting that the site has gotten about 5,000 visits to date.

Harrington said his Web site was totally redesigned for this campaign, and he is using it to share information with campaign workers more than in the past.

Kelley is the only candidate who doesn't take donations through a Web site. Candidates said the amount of money raised online by the campaigns was not immediately available, although Stewart said the financial response through his site has been “very encouraging.”

Other evidence that local campaigns are an increasingly digital affair was seen during the recent mayoral debate, when questions posted to the Web site inBrockton.com were among those posed to the candidates.

Campaigning, both digital and traditional, will ramp up over the next week, candidates said. Stewart said he plans to send out more frequent e-mails to his supporter list.

The election will eliminate one of the three candidates, all of whom are Democrats. The two top vote-getters will advance to the Nov. 6 general election.

Although the latest Internet advances are being used more and more in campaigning, all the mayoral candidates remain grounded in the basics.

“The technology is fine, but the only way to really campaign is out in the streets,” Harrington said.

Kyle Alspach can be reached at kalspach@enterprisenews.com.