A reflection on the importance of SDPolitics, from Roll Call:
Many state and local blogs find themselves focusing on races that just aren’t competitive. These blogs “become very enamored with certain candidates, and while they may be very well intentioned those candidates are often running in districts that are unfavorable,” said Greg Speed, former spokesman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. But Speed added that in battleground areas, keeping an eye on what the blogging community is saying can be an important part of running a campaign.
Speed pointed to South Dakota and Sen. John Thune’s (R) 2004 battle against then-Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D) as an election where bloggers showed just how much of a force they can be. In that election, South Dakota Republicans orchestrated a highly effective blog-based campaign against Daschle and one of the state’s largest newspapers, the Sioux Falls Argus Leader. During the campaign, bloggers hammered away at the paper’s coverage of Daschle and raised questions about certain writers’ objectivity.
“You had right-wing bloggers start a blog essentially claiming the Argus Leader was treating Daschle with kid gloves,” Speed said. “And what you had was other mainstream media in the state seeing these things and thinking they were real stories.”
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