Posts Taged politics

Becki Donatelli comments on new media & 2012 elections on NPR

April 20, 2011 Tags: , , , Campaign Solutions

Today, Campaign Solutions’ president and founder Becki Donatelli was featured in an NPR story, “Digital Media Could Make Or Break Presidential Race,” commenting on the 2012 presidential campaign cycle and the use of new media tools and techniques:

Republican Becki Donatelli, John McCain’s chief Internet strategist during his two presidential runs, says she thinks the 2012 campaign is a jump ball where the Web advantage could go to either party.

Donatelli says politicians on the Web used to try to pull people online from wherever they were to the candidate’s home page — now, they are trying to push.

“Instead of hoping to get them back to a website,” Donatelli says, “we’re delivering them messages on Facebook, [through] targeted advertising, email, pushing out messages to the political landscape.”

So instead of having to visit Sarah Palin’s blog to see what she thinks, you get those messages automatically popping up in your Facebook or Twitter feed.

Read the entire story and listen to the audio clip here.

California, the next budget battle. It doesn’t take a Prophet.

February 28, 2011 Tags: , , , , , Campaign Solutions

They say predicting an earthquake is impossible, California geologists are always warning of “The Big One”. The citizens of California may not be soothsayers, but the foresight of the pending financial disaster doesn’t require a Richter scale. The foreshock in Wisconsin, Indiana, and Ohio has forced Republican Governors to win back their parties reputation of being financial conservatives, only to be swayed by a bunch of elected officials who don’t want to “sit in the circle”. They have ignored their sworn duty to represent their constituents on the floor, for fear of losing the financial security of their Union backers (and funding for their next election).

I can only hope that CA Gov. Jerry Brown will remember his campaign promise to balance the budget. As Midwest governors have figured out, Collective Bargaining rights and greater pension/healthcare contributions must be adjusted. We cannot forsake the security of the private sector for the retirement of the public sector.

Will CA legislators flee to their favorite casino on the Las Vegas Strip?

Will the President continue his boycott of Nevada tourism? Perhaps he will encourage these officials to stay in Nevada and help boost the economy by spending CA tax dollars at the craps table.

The financial Richter scale is showing that a 10.0 earthquake is on the way to California. I just hope that California has the money to pay its first responders. A pension is no good, if you can’t pay the salary on which it is based.