Web sites for singles to meet potential mates are growing increasingly popular, as busy people of all ages look to the Internet to pair them with people of similar interests. Now the campaign of presidential candidate Howard Dean (D) is using the Internet to help supporters meet each other, and hopefully generate interest and campaign cash for the former Vermont governor's candidacy.
Dean's campaign has signed with the Web site Meet Up (www.meetup.com) to help his supporters "meet up" in person at various locations around the country. The "Dean in 2004" section of the Web site is one of more than 1,000 categories used to organize local gatherings for everything from military families to Elvis fans.
More than 23,000 Dean fans have signed up so far. To choose a meeting place, members enter their ZIP code, and interested parties vote on a location. The Dean campaign aims to send representatives to as many "meet ups" as possible. Dean himself came to an event in New York City that hundreds attended, said campaign manager Joe Trippi.
Several other Democratic presidential candidates have sections on meetup.com, but Dean is the only candidate so far to use it extensively.
"We've got a message that energizes people to go to a meeting, and to come back and do things for the campaign afterward," he said.
Such grass-roots efforts have the potential to dilute the financial advantage of candidates like Sen. John Edwards (D-NC) and Sen. John Kerry (D-VIA). They were able to raise more money than Dean during the first quarter of 2003, and they're expected to continue doing so.
"It would probably cost a campaign a lot of money to have a full staff in all 50 states" doing the grass-roots work, Trippi said. "This isn't top-down organizing; it's really bottom-up."
For a time in early 2003, the Dean in 2004 category was the most popular on the Web site.
"Politics is playing a huge role in what our company does," said Myles Weissleder, a spokesman for MeetUp.
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