Online Political Operatives (Campaigns, not DU)

[Adelante]

Meet the OPOs
Online Political Operatives, Such as Mindy Finn and Stephen Smith, Want New Media to Send a New Message
By Jose Antonio Vargas
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, May 4, 2007; Page A01


Howard Dean's cometlike campaign in 2003 was the first to integrate the Internet into a presidential race, and Joe Rospars was there, a 22-year-old working as an "all-around Web guy" until the campaign suddenly collapsed.

Four years later, it's not just the upstarts, as Dean was, who have embraced online campaigning. And Rospars is part of a new generation of strategists who share a passionate belief that they can transform not just individual campaigns but also politics itself.

Rospars, 26, today runs a staff of 11 at the Chicago headquarters of Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.). Mathew Gross, 35, who blogged for Dean a few desks away from Rospars, serves as chief online strategist for Democrat John Edwards in Chapel Hill, N.C. Mindy Finn, 26, a veteran of the 2004 Bush campaign, does the same for Republican Mitt Romney in Boston. Every campaign has someone similar -- young, tech-savvy and committed to the transforming possibilities of the Internet.

For these online political operatives -- or OPOs, as a few have taken to calling themselves -- the Internet isn't just a tool. It's a strategy, a whole new way of campaigning, a form of communication, from blogs to MySpace to YouTube, with far more potential than the old media of print and television. "TV is a passive experience, and the Internet is all about interactivity, all about making a direct connection," said Rospars, waxing expansive in the way all the OPOs tend to do.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/03/AR2007050302546.html?hpid=topnews