"Edwards staffer takes to the Web"

News-Record (NC):

About four years ago, before Mathew Gross made his way from Utah to Vermont on the off chance Howard Dean's campaign might put him to work, presidential contenders didn't worry much about hiring a head blogger or Internet strategist.

In one campaign cycle, the position that Gross helped create and define while working for the former Vermont governor is now considered critical, one of the first big hires a candidate makes after a campaign chief, fundraiser, pollster and media consultant.

Gross, 35, and now a Greensboro resident, signed on with the precursor to former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards' 2008 presidential campaign last year. His job has as much to do with helping supporters get themselves organized and find one another as it is does with technology.

"I think what the Internet really does, what it's provided, is a tool for ordinary Americans to get involved," Gross said during lunchtime conversation last week. "... Prior to the Internet, if you didn't live in Iowa or New Hampshire at the beginning, there wasn't much you could do other than read the paper and send a check."

Edwards is using the Internet to do everything from letting supporters know about rallies to networking volunteers for civic projects.

In an e-mail sent last week, Gross encouraged supporters to upload messages to YouTube, an Internet service for sharing home-brewed videos.

"The key thing to recognize is the technology is going to change, it's still changing. It hasn't stopped," Gross said. "If YouTube didn't exist a year and a half ago, what completely unforeseen community or technology is going to exist by the general election of 2008?"

Back in 2003, blogs — interactive Internet-based journals — were just coming into their own on the political scene. Gross was still living the quiet life in Moab, Utah. But he had started writing for MyDD.com, a liberal blog, and was increasingly frustrated by what he saw as mistakes by the Bush administration.

So in early February of that year, he drove about 2,300 miles to Burlington, Vt., and Dean's campaign headquarters, got past a series of gatekeepers and arrived at the threshold of campaign manager Joe Trippi's office before being grabbed by more than one set of hands ready to throw him out on the street.

"He calls out at the top of his lungs, 'I write for MyDD,'" Trippi recalled. "And I immediately yelled back, 'You're hired.'"

Trippi was a fan of MyDD and said if Gross had blurted out anything but that, the one-time river raft guide would have been tossed overboard.

That story has been well-worn in the circles of folks interested in Internet politics, but Trippi said it tells as much about Gross as any other anecdote. He immediately put Gross to work creating what became Blog for America, a hub for Dean supporters to read up on the campaign, organize and donate.

Other politicians had used the Internet. At the time, Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona set the gold standard in the 2000 presidential election by doing modest fundraising and compiling a large e-mail distribution list.

But the Dean effort allowed for a more personal voice rather than the corporate speak of a campaign news release. Supporters were encouraged to voice their thoughts, share ideas and in some ways act on the campaign's behalf without being in the formal structure.

It's a strategy that still doesn't sit well with some campaign strategists, who are used to carefully crafting and controlling a candidate's strategy. But Gross said it's foolish for a campaign to turn away supporters' energy.

"They're already talking about you, they're already advocating for you. So let's give them the tools to do that," he said.

Stephanie Schriock worked with Gross on Dean's campaign and the 2006 run of Jon Tester, who was elected as a senator from Montana. She is a self-described "pretty traditional campaign person" who says she initially balked at what an interactive Internet campaign had to offer.

"It was hard to let go of the control," Schriock said.

And it's still hard when the enthusiasm and wishes of an active Internet audience run up against political reality.

"Not everybody is online, just like not everyone is watching the television or reading the newspaper," she said.

And sometimes, she said, the issues that play well online don't help candidates make their case to a wider audience.

"(Gross) has got a good gut political instinct that helps him through that," Schriock said.

Carter Wrenn, a Republican strategist who once worked for U.S. Sen. Jesse Helms of North Carolina, says it was Gross who first illustrated to him the utility of the Internet in a campaign.

He calls Gross "a lethal weapon" because of his mix of talents that include tech savvy and, echoing Schriock's phrase, gut political instinct.

"And he can write," Wrenn said. "That may sound simple, but in politics, if you hire 100 people for a campaign, most of them are not natural writers."

Although he's loath to give any credit to Edwards, a Democrat, Wrenn says Gross was a good hire.

"Campaigns are either going to have to find a guy like this or put together a team of people to do the same things," he said.

Gross said his interest in politics started growing at an early age and, for a new media guy, took root with a horribly old media outlet: watching the evening news with his family.

"Pretty much politics was sort of the language we spoke in my family, but we spoke very different (dialects)," Gross said. "My father was very Republican and still is. My mother was a Republican and now a Democrat. "

Posting on Gross' personal blog, Deride and Conquer, has been sparse during the past two weeks, with only a couple of one-line place-keeper messages since Christmas.

"Very light posting through the holidays, as I'll be on the road," reads the Dec. 26 entry. A few days later, Edwards' presidential campaign officially launched.

Gross said he wants to get back to his personal Web outlet just as soon as he has time.

"It's always like this," he said. "When you have the most to say, you don't have the time to write it."