The virtual John Kerry

With an e-mail list 3 million strong, the newly reformed liberal is primed for another White House run. But strategists warn against relying on the Internet to win in 2008.

By Michael Scherer

Read more: Politics, News, Fundraising, John Kerry, Michael Scherer, 2008 election

Salon image / AP photo

Dec. 13, 2006 | WASHINGTON -- If you just look at his fundraising numbers, Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry appears to be in top political form, a veritable contender for the Democratic heavyweight title.

Among all of the 2008 White House wannabes, Kerry campaigned in more races (81), recruited more grass-roots volunteers (5,000), and gave money to more Democratic candidates (260) than anyone else during the last midterm election cycle. In 24 hours, his network of supporters drummed up and delivered $1 million to pay for the final media buys of four Senate candidates in close elections. In total, he raised and distributed to other Democrats $14 million, outdone only by Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., who gave away $21 million. At Kerry's urging, Americans made 215,000 donations to Democrats before September.

"I think it was huge. We put a lot of money out there," Kerry said in an interview, taking a break in a stuffed chair in his Capitol Hill office a couple of days before the 109th Congress ended this month. "We did a lot of mobilizing. We did a lot of messaging. We did a lot of energizing and educating."

Kerry was not only speaking of his efforts as a traditional Democratic leader, a man who toured the country with endless hotel ballroom appearances and obligatory telephone calls to high-dollar donors. He was also speaking about the performance of his e-mail list -- a 3-million-strong gold mine made up of supporters and donors to his 2004 presidential campaign. As much as any other single factor, the list allowed Kerry to establish himself as a major benefactor for Congress' incoming freshman class, a godsend who filled candidates' coffers at key times in the campaign. For Kerry, all it took was a few well-written paragraphs trumping the need for money, and a staffer willing to hit the send button for millions of e-mails.

But e-mail alone will never deliver a candidate to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Especially John Kerry, whose status as one of the Democratic Party's most prolific fundraisers has not yet translated into tangible enthusiasm for his potential 2008 White House run. In fact, any Kerry 2008 campaign effort is already broadly seen to be on life support, hampered by a botched joke about President Bush in October, lingering resentment for his 2004 loss and mixed success with Kerry's most recent effort to reinvent himself as a muscular spokesman against President Bush's Iraq policy. A recent poll of political insiders by the National Journal did not even rank Kerry in a list of the top 10 Democratic contenders for the White House. And a likability poll by Quinnipiac University found that Kerry ranked near the bottom of presidential contenders in September, well before his October gaffe, which sent his approval numbers plummeting to dead last among 2008 contenders. On Monday, Kerry's friend and fellow Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy even hinted in public comments that he may endorse a candidate for president in 2008 other than Kerry.

Online political strategists, who live and die by the effectiveness of e-mail solicitation, have no trouble explaining away the apparent disconnect between Kerry's prolific ability to raise money online and his inability to garner broader public support. E-mail solicitation, they explain, is only as good as the product it is selling, and Kerry's success during 2006 came largely because he was working so selflessly for a Democratic takeover of Congress. "It wasn't on the power of John Kerry," explained one Democratic Internet strategist, who did not want to be identified while criticizing Kerry. "It was on the power of his e-mail list, and frankly, if he runs for president, I doubt that list will support him."

This is a key lesson, say strategists, for the dozen or so presidential campaigns that are now developing their own online strategies for 2008. Internet donors do not demand the same degree of access and favors as traditional high-dollar donors, but there is a trade-off: They are also far less tied to any single personality in politics. Online, it is often the message that matters as much as the messenger. "In e-mail fundraising, what you ask people to try to do [determines] your credibility. It's all you've got," said Tom Matzzie, who helped raise $27 million in the 2006 cycle from MoveOn.org's 3.2 million-member e-mail list. "People will stick with you as long as your ask is credible." In other words, Kerry may have better luck motivating his list to give money to close Senate races on the eve of an election, when there is a high chance of a payoff, than to support his presidential aspirations, which appear to be more of a long shot.

Consultants working on the 2008 presidential campaigns have already begun making grand predictions about the Internet's evolving role as a sort of ATM machine for campaigns with exciting messages and candidates. "There is an unlimited amount of money," said Rich Galen, a longtime advisor to Newt Gingrich, a possible GOP presidential contender, at a recent campaign consultant forum sponsored by National Journal's Hotline and the University of Virginia. At the same event, other consultants fell over themselves expressing their enthusiasm about all the political money now ripe for the picking. "You can raise it quicker and raise it more easily," agreed Mark McKinnon, an advisor to Arizona Sen. John McCain and a former media director for President Bush's 2004 campaign. "Things can happen overnight."

But it remains an open question whether the flood of online money in 2008 will match the phenomenon of 2004, when all expectations were broken. Between the March primaries and the July convention in Boston, the Kerry campaign pulled in between $80 million and $85 million online, about 25 percent of all the money he raised. Even after the convention, when Kerry stopped accepting donations so he could take federal matching funds, his online fundraising machine continued to raise tens of millions of dollars for the Democratic National Committee.

"Not anybody can do this. This was a perfect storm of energy and passion, having an identifiable enemy [in President Bush] and a war," said David Thorne, a close friend of Kerry's who oversaw his Internet operation in 2004. "It is my question as to whether any 2008 candidate will be able to build the kind of list we built in 2004," he said. "My sense is not. The energy will be more dissipated." Ari Rabin-Havt, a former Kerry Internet advisor who now works for Nevada Sen. Harry Reid, the incoming majority leader, also cautioned presidential contenders against taking Internet fundraising for granted. "Consultants can not stick in their card and then pull cash out for their candidate," he said. "It takes work and a candidate who can really reach out."

Next page: Kerry's efforts to rebrand himself as a hard-charging hero of the Democratic Party's liberal base