Low-Tech Dean

Much has been made of Dean's high-tech campaign approach. Indeed, he has used the Internet to great advantage, building a campaign of volunteers (according to literature I received recently from the Dean campaign) of 480,000 people. Moreover, he reports that more than 200,000 Americans have contributed an average of $77 each to the Dean campaign.

That kind of grassroots giving is amazing at this point of the campaign, especially when one considers this: According to a Campaign Finance Institute study cited in USA Today on July 20, 2003, "only about 600,000 people contributed any amount to the 2000 presidential candidates. That's a third of 1% of the voting-age population." (According to the same article, big donors - classified as those who gave $750 or more -- accounted for 74% of Bush's funding and 65% of Gore's funding in the 2000 primary.)

In the past week, as my mailbox collects campaign literature of all kinds, one really stood out: a hand-addressed and signed small note from a Dean supporter in Florida. I've since talked to others in Iowa who have received hand-written letters from 2-3 Dean supporters around the country. This is the kind of approach demonstrates a personal connection to a candidate that TV ads just can't create. Low-tech, but it works, and so far Dean is the only one I know of who is doing it in Iowa.