In
a 21st century campaign, it is no longer enough to offer ideas. Campaigns
now routinely urge voters to submit their own.
Each of the three major, declared
candidates for governor – Whitman, Poizner, Campbell – asks voters, through
their web sites, to suggest ideas for making California a better place. I
wondered: how many of these ideas made their way into the platforms of the
candidates?
I asked each of the three campaigns
to answer that question. Here’s what I learned: not many. Only Tom Campbell’s campaign
could point to specific policy ideas that came directly from the ‘net.
Here are each campaign’s response
to my question:
POIZNER:
Bettina Inclan of the Poizner
campaign provided her answer by email: "Creating a strong dialogue with voters
has been an integral part of Steve Poizner’s campaign. Thousands of
Californians interact with Steve online through Twitter, Facebook and his
website. Yet he understands that
interaction can’t only live online it needs to translate into real world
action. Some examples:
"The California water crisis has
been a priority for Steve. He went to the Central Valley and proposed his
policy ideas and asked people to join him and sign a petition on his web site.
Over a thousand people signed his petition and hundreds posted their thoughts
on his plan.
"Recently, Steve Poizner participated in Brandman
University’s gubernatorial "Twitter debate." Dozens of questions were posted
via twitter through the hashtag #CAdebate. Steve answered many of these
questions. The tweets also gave the campaign a stronger understanding of
people’s interests, most of which were education and California’s broken
economy.
"The campaign regularly posts articles on the our blog,
Facebook and Twitter asking for feedback. Recently we posted a poll asking
about Californians’ thought on creating a part-time legislature. Hundreds took
the poll and talked about the pros and cons about the idea."
WHITMAN:
Whitman’s
campaign has space for suggestions and conversation that include lots of
postings. A number of the recent posts come from people who don’t like eBay.
But there are a number of suggestions about the economy, illegal immigration
and the budget, with a half-a-dozen posts a day coming in even during the busy
holiday season.
In response to my question, a
campaign official, who asked to speak on background (not to be quoted by name),
called back and made the following points:
-The
campaign has set up message boards on the web site, similar to what Whitman had
at eBay, and the suggestions made there are closely read and considered.
-The
campaign has been intrigued by ideas on keeping jobs from being lost to
neighboring states, especially ideas tied to specific industries, including the
movie business.
-The
campaign expects to do much more to seek ideas, including live chats with key
policy aides.
CAMPBELL:
The candidate himself responded to
my email and mentioned a handful of ideas that came in over the Internet:
-"On water conservation, lining the
canals as a way of saving was suggested by a blogger."
-"On desalination, using nuclear
was suggested as an energy source:" Under the theory, Campbell explained:
"we’ll probably encounter the same environmental objections to a desal plant as
to a nuclear plant, so why not advance both ideas together?"
-"On community colleges, I received
the recommendation to include counselors on the ‘classroom’ side of the ledger
for purposes of applying the law that 50% of the budget has to be spent in the
classroom, since counseling students to take the right courses produces
demonstrably better results–especially for retraining needs in a recession.
-"Prison guards have suggested
savings from not reincarcerating for minor parole violations."
It’s worth reading the submissions
in the Ideas section of Campbell’s campaign web site. Campbell notes that not
all the ideas contributed by visitors to the site have been saved by the blog
— the current list has 135 ideas submitted by 177 people.
It’s an interesting list of very
specific ideas. Many involve education funding. But among others I found
intriguing during a quick reading: basing the vehicle license fee on the weight
of the car (since heavier cars typically do more damage to roads), creating a
centralized way for people to apply for teaching jobs, splitting up Los Angeles
and other large counties so that boards of supervisors are closer to
constituents, lowering the sales tax on big ticket items such as cars and
machinery to spur the economy, providing tax credits for businesses that hire
ex-felons, and eliminating front license plates.
Oh, yes. One would-be policy maven
suggested that Campbell, as a candidate with so many ideas, should think about
ditching his party and running as an independent.