Net Activists Helped Decide Connecticut's Primary

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Businessman Ned Lamont got the Democratic nomination for the Senate in Connecticut this week, beating incumbent Senator Joseph Lieberman. One reason may have been the support Lamont had from liberal Web sites and bloggers. Another reason may have been the crash of Lieberman's campaign Web site. NPR's Peter Overby reports on what the Connecticut primary indicates about the future of online politics.

PETER OVERBY reporting:

Dan Geary is afraid he foresees one big thing about the online future, tighter security. Geary is a political activist and Web consultant in Las Vegas. He designed the Web site for Joe Lieberman's primary campaign. The site was hacked in July. This Monday and Tuesday it crashed, out of action for the two most critical days of the campaign.

Mr. DAN GEARY (Web consultant, Las Vegas): What happened was more than just an assault on a random Web site. This was, you know, a disruption of a federal campaign. And that's kind of serious stuff.

OVERBY: Geary says the FBI has called him about it. He says they termed the case an active investigation. Some bloggers maintain that the Lieberman site wasn't hacked. It was just overwhelmed by all the traffic. After all, this was a race that generated national, even international, interest. Geary says he thinks Lieberman's site was hacked. But even if it wasn't, there's always next time.

Mr. GEARY: I hope that the next chapter of politics and the Internet is going to be mutual for social networking. A mature blogging environment that becomes even more relevant. And not we need to staff our campaign with security experts, we need to shut the doors interactively, not open them.

OVERBY: The Internet has been all about opening doors, but with open doors anyone can come through. That means campaign land is no longer the private world it has been, populated by politicians, consultants and journalists. Internet politics admits a lot more free agents.

Ms. CAROL DARR (Director, George Washington University's Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet): It's the coming democratization of democracy - as somebody said - and that's not necessarily going to be pretty.

OVERBY: Carol Darr is director of George Washington University's Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet.

Ms. DARR: So much of what passed for independent activity for the last 30 years has really been activity by mainstream political operatives that wasn't really independent. And I think you're about to see truly independent activity by interested activists on both sides.

OVERBY: Several prominent bloggers have played down their own influence in the Lamont/Lieberman race. Conservative political consultant Matt Lewis agrees. He's an occasional blogger himself. Still, he says it's easy to exaggerate the impact of the Internet. He says Lamont won because he's a millionaire, not because progressive activists were tapping away on computer keyboards.

Mr. MATT LEWIS (Political consultant): You know I don't want to take anything away from it. I think it does have an impact. I believe that Ned Lamont was definitely well served by having The Daily Cause and different liberal bloggers support him. But at the end of the day, he put in millions of his own dollars. And that had a much more dramatic impact.

OVERBY: So the forecast may be this: politicians seeing their field of endeavor thrown open the same way journalism has been over the past few years. But some fundamental things still apply, most of all money. If candidates want to run TV ads or get phone banks to turn out the vote, they still need a lot of cash, at least so far. Peter Overby, NPR News, Washington.

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