Turnout at the polls is typically dismal among young people. So how does a candidate get his message to the college set?
In Maryland, candidates for governor are showing up on Facebook, according to The Washington Post. The two Democratic candidates, Martin O’Malley and Douglas M. Duncan, list their favorite movies and music — but to what end? It’s a bit of a mystery. The 43-year-old Mr. O’Malley, the mayor of Baltimore, who plays in a Celtic-rock band, seems most at home on Facebook, with his still-youthful tastes: He cites U2 and his own band as his favorite music. Mr. Duncan apparently prefers politics in both work and play: His favorite movies include Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and the Kevin Kline comedy Dave.
Would any twentysomething hipster college student be wooed by a candidate who lists a forgettable political comedy as his favorite movie? Wouldn’t a good deal of Maryland’s student community see this as blatant pandering, or an invasion of their space? Who knows? Some think this might be effective. Phil Noble, founder of PoliticsOnline, a company that provides products and advice for online campaigns, likens the Facebook profiles to Robert Kennedy’s 1968 campaigning among college students.
The Post article notes that Facebook is not only a tool of self-promotion but also a means of character assassination. Robert Ehrlich, the current Republican governor of Maryland and an opponent of Mr. O’Malley and Mr. Duncan, is mocked on a Facebook profile created by Lee Fang, president of the Maryland Federation of College Democrats. According to the profile, Ehrlich is interested in "getting terrible haircuts."
