Niche groups use Web to gain ear of '08 contenders

With no headquarters, no budget, and members who stay in touch mainly over the Internet, Asian Pacific Americans for Progress is no heavyweight in national politics.

But this month, the group of mostly young, liberal voters scored a conference call with Elizabeth Edwards, the wife of former Sen. John Edwards, a top-tier candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination.

For a half-hour, Mrs. Edwards fielded questions on her husband's views on immigrant visa backlogs, hate-crime laws, and the alleged sexual enslavement of Korean women by the Japanese military during World War II.

"She definitely did some homework," Dennis Arguelles says at a house party in this Los Angeles suburb, where he and five other APAP members listened to her on speaker phone.

The Internet-driven political activism that helped bankroll former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean's insurgent 2004 bid for the Democratic presidential nomination is back, in ways that are starting to transcend fundraising.

Groups of voters tethered by little more than a website are drawing campaigns' attention for their numbers and political savvy, not just their dollars.

"The size of an organization's e-mail list will get more attention now than it would have two or four years ago," says Andrew Rasiej, cofounder of TechPresident.com, a website tracking the intersection of presidential campaigns and the Web.

A seat at a big-ticket fundraiser or the ability to raise large sums of campaign cash is under no threat of extinction as the quickest route to face time with a major presidential candidate. But voters uniting under the banner of a website are getting a level of notice – even if still relatively brief – unseen in earlier election cycles.

In recent weeks, four Democratic hopefuls – Senator Edwards, Rep. Dennis Kucinich, Sen. Barack Obama, and New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson – recorded videos detailing their views on the Iraq war for Democracy for America, a largely Web-based umbrella group for some 850 local activist organizations.

Senator Obama taped a nearly six-minute segment reiterating his opposition to the war and praising the group's members. "If all of you are [active and engaged] then I am absolutely confident that over time things will change," he says.

Edwards, in his video, is similarly effusive, calling himself a "huge fan" and thanking members for "extraordinary grass-roots activism and leadership."

A cheap screening

Jim Dean, chairman of Democracy for America and Howard Dean's brother, says the group is not yet making endorsements, just giving members a chance to vet Democratic hopefuls on one of its signature issues.

"The advantage for us is we get smarter about the candidates and … a certain access without having to spend a gazillion dollars," says Mr. Dean. "The advantage for the candidates is, this is a constituency and [potentially] also a great source of help on their campaign."

In the San Francisco Bay Area earlier this year, a social network of 150 undecided Democratic voters loosely organized over the Internet enticed Edwards and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton to salon-style question-and-answer sessions where no money changed hands. Governor Richardson had a video-conference with the group, and Obama granted members free admission to a local fundraiser.

The group, called Win the White House in '08, "is the legal equivalent of a book club," says cofounder Jeff Anderson. "The group doesn't endorse candidates; it doesn't raise money as a group. It's just a network of friends coming together to do what democracy is supposed to be about, which is making an informed decision."

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