Of course the idiots at Fortune don't know the states where certain small colleges are located. Fortunately, HRC will most likely not have to battle the Paulista infowarriors in 2016.
Katie Dowd is the campaign’s digital director, in charge of putting the swagger in Clinton’s Twitter–not to mention Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr and all the rest.
Katie Dowd may be in charge of the Clinton campaign’s digital strategy, but she’s not all about pixels. Indeed, Dowd is a self-described “people geek”—a sociology major drawn to politics because she’s interested in understanding what makes people tick. After graduating from (Ohio's) Wittenberg University, she headed to D.C. and wound up working for a direct mail firm, learning old-style political persuasion that would later become useful in the exploding universe of social media. She worked at the two organizations charged with electing Democratic members of Congress—the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
Most recently, Dowd worked on a State Department project called TechCamp, which helped civil society groups around the globe harness web tools for social action. A prime example: The Lithuanian activist who wanted to make the buildings in his town wheelchair accessible. Through TechCamp, he was able to use Google Maps to “tag” buildings and prove to authorities that physically disabled residents were being excluded. Before this project, Dowd worked on STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) issues as senior adviser to the chief technology officer at the White House.
When Dowd started out in political campaigns a decade ago, early engagement with voters was mostly an exercise in fund-raising; operatives viewed the Internet as an ATM machine. That has changed dramatically. Now, engaging voters online means a lot more than asking them to write checks. On the Democratic side, the presidential campaigns of Howard Dean and John Kerry set the bar for using the web to create a grassroots network of passionate voters–a trend that Obama all but perfected in 2008. When Dowd was part of the 2008 Clinton campaign, the team experimented with new digital techniques, like enabling volunteers to make internet calls to fellow voters from their own homes.
This time around it’s a far bigger, more complicated ball game. Dowd and her staff (likely to grow to 150) will have to manage a range (of) platforms, from Twitter and FaceBook to Instagram, Tumblr, Pintrest—and likely other emerging networks we haven’t even heard of yet. “We have to think about where the audiences are,” says Dowd. Real-time video platforms like Meerkat and Periscope will change how campaigns operate. In the 2016 race, says Dowd, the focus will be on “letting people feel like they are part of the real-time movement of a campaign.”
Vincent Harris isn't impressed. The 26-year-old Republican strategist, best known for putting Ted Cruz on the internet, has relentlessly criticized his party for their technological backwardness, telling any reporter who calls that the GOP's digital operations are second-rate and that the party's claims of progress are "a lot of talk."Begrudgingly, other Republicans have started to listen, bringing Harris on to translate the 21st century for high-profile conservative campaigns.
Vincent Harris: I've always been a big fan of Senator Paul, since he first came on to the scene in 2010. I'm a big admirer of him as a thought leader in the party, and nationally on everything from issues of security and privacy to expanding the party across age groups, across demographics. I'm also just a big fan of where he puts the Constitution and the powers of the federal government.
So how it really came about: I mean, I've known some of his staff. You know, I had a conversation with them and they offered me a big seat at the table, and I really believe that digital is going to play a very important role in Senator Paul's organization. And I believe that Senator Paul wants to continue to innovate and reach people through different, new means and to run a campaign that is unlike any organization that's been run previously. Really integrating a proper digital operation throughout the entire organization—and leading with digital and with data.
I think something that I'm willing to discuss now is that I want this organization—I'm just going to say "organization" for the time being—I want this organization to be not just simply Rand Paul talking at his supporters, I want this to be a crowdsourced campaign. A crowdsourced organization. I think that is one way you're going to see things going differently. It is my vision to build a platform, and to build an organization, that can be manipulated by the developer community.
I think this is a mistake that large presidential campaigns in the past have made. First off, they've only looked to the insular, political tech community. And then, as the organizations have grown, they haven't listened. They haven't listened to what's new in the Space Race and that has led to a stifling of how campaigns and how political operations have been run. One thing that I'm making certain of is that I don't wanna talk to the same three people that have pitched and worked in the political space. I wanna talk to new people and different people. To people that are helping Target, and are helping Home Depot, and that are helping McDonald's. The people that have helped Old Spice online. That's who I wanna talk to.