The other day, I sat down with Connell Donatelli’s new president, Chuck DeFeo, to talk about how he likes the new gig and to gather where he thinks the GOP stands online.
Here’s what he had to say.
So, how are your first two weeks?
Well, I’ve been a little sidetracked – my first week on the job, my wife delivered our baby early, so this is really my first week.
What made you decide to join Connell Donatelli?
This was just a great opportunity for me. I’ve been working in Washington, DC for about 13 years, 8 of which were spent working on Capitol Hill under the umbrella of election politics and 4 of which were spent finding out how to use the web to build online grassroots communities to foster the debate of ideas…Now, I have the ability to combine those two sets of experiences to use the Internet to win elections, so I’m looking forward to the challenge.
I would argue that the Right has come a long way, in the past two years even, when it comes to embracing modern media. Where do you think we stand right now? Have we met the Left online? Are we still catching up? Are there areas where we’ve surpassed the Left? Areas for improvement?
First, I think the Right has wrongly allowed the Left to define our movement as always being behind online, when in fact there was a time in election politics when we were in the lead.
I would argue that we were in the lead in the presidential race against John Kerry in 2004 and even against the Dean campaign in 2003 & 2004. Certainly, post 2004, the right has embraced 2.0 media and the social web.
The problem is – we didn’t embrace where the web was going. In 2008, the Democrats did a phenomenal job of using the web to pull individual people into the political process and that’s where we fall behind.
That being said, the sky is not falling & it’s never as bad as some people might say it is.
Who do you see right now in this current election cycle as the shining star, if you will, of the Right when it comes to utilizing the Internet?
To be fair, there aren’t a lot of races going on in the here and now – there just simply aren’t a lot of candidates running right now in 2009, but there are exceptions.
Some of the bright spots I see are coming from the Chuck DeVore campaign in California. I think Justin Hart is doing a lot of great work online for that senate race and I look forward to seeing what’s coming down the pipeline.
But Virginia is going to be in the spotlight this year and frankly, the Democrats aren’t really impressing me there. It’s clear that Organizing for America is still a powerhouse when it comes to engaging its grassroots base, but it is to be seen, whether that group is able to use that power to its advantage in November.
