Intellectual Property Law

In the annals of online campaigning, senator John McCain has rarely blazed new paths. But a recent initiative to hold conference call briefings of left-wing and issue-based bloggers could be a presidential campaign first.

The McCain campaign has recently started to hold bi-weekly conference calls with left-wing blogs and blogs focussed on single issues such as the environment and health care.

Politicians who hold blogger calls usually reach out to writers on the same team, trusting that those writers and party activists will amplify their message.

The Democratic National Committee announced Wednesday, for example, that it is credentialing a cadre of 55 state bloggers to cover its proceedings from the coveted spot of the convention floor. The bloggers will be seated along with their state's delegates.

The last McCain blogger conference call was held Thursday. It included Greg Sargent of TPM Election Central, Kate Sheppard, a political reporter for the environmental web site Grist.org and Joanne Bamberger of PunditMom as well as Erin Kotecki Vest, who blogs at BlogHer.com, The Huffington Post and Momocrats.com.

A previous blogger conference call focused on health care, and it included 10-12 bloggers from specialty blogs such as Chronic Dose and Med Gadget. In all, there were about 50 bloggers listening in.

The conference calls are an extension of the weekly calls the senator from Arizona holds with conservative bloggers to brief them on his positions. At one point during his tumultuous presidential campaign, he joked that bloggers were the only people who were interested in talking to him.

Asked why he was was bothering to foster a relationship with people who were likely to take pot-shots, Patrick Hynes, one of McCain's online communications consultants, says: "The one thing that I will say about John McCain is that he loves the rough and tumble of politics."

More importantly, he thinks that it's important to engage with people who are  opinion leaders and more active in politics than average Americans.

Tracy Russo, John Edwards' former blog outreach co-coordinator, appeared surprised when she heard  about  McCain's new communications strategy.

"Wow, that's pretty incredible," she said. "It's good thinking on the part of McCain's campaign."

She said she wasn't sure that the strategy would work in terms of getting a message across to the progressive community, but she thought reaching out to issue-based blogs could yield benefits.

"They're not necessarily partisan all the time," she notes. "They may have a progressive or conservative take, but they're not in the tank for the party, and if someone like McCain has a good energy idea they'll blog about it."

Photo: Associated Press/Jeff Chiu