"Have a Laptop? You, Too, Can Sway New Hampshire Race"

Wall Street Journal:

HANOVER, N.H. -- As a high-school Latin teacher, Dean Barker makes an unlikely political heavyweight.

"It's weird," he says. "One minute I'm in the teachers' lounge making copies and the next I'm spending 30 minutes on the phone with Bill Richardson," he says, referring to New Mexico's governor, one of eight Democrats running for president.

Mr. Barker, a 36-year-old native New Yorker who lives in Andover, is one of three managing editors for "Blue Hampshire," a Democratic blog that has quickly become an influential voice in the New Hampshire primary campaign.

Traffic averages only about 800 readers a day. But with fans that include state Democratic activists and high-ranking party leaders, the site and its founders, who have no professional political experience, are getting an unusual amount of personal attention from Democratic presidential campaigns this year.

"Sometimes I have to pinch myself," says one of Mr. Barker's co-founders, Laura Clawson, a 30-year-old postdoctoral fellow in sociology at Dartmouth. She recently took time from her studies for some one-on-one time with former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards aboard his campaign bus.

The Blue Hamsters, as the three bloggers sometimes call themselves and their readers, represent a new class of political amateurs who are changing the way information flows to activists. In Iowa, there's "Bleeding Heartland," a Democratic site founded by a college student. In Florida, Democratic bloggers recently formed the "Blog Florida Blue" coalition. Republicans are getting into the act, too, with sites like South Carolina's "Palmetto Scoop," which serves up bits of news.

The blogs don't matter so much for the front-runners, who get plenty of media attention already and have no trouble generating crowds. Neither New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton nor Illinois Sen. Barack Obama has sat down with Blue Hampshire.

But for the clutch of second-tier candidates, local blogs like Blue Hampshire offer a new chance to get attention.

"These are people who, if we can get them, they'll go out and convince their friends to support [a candidate]. They have large circles of friends who listen to them," says Matt Browner-Hamlin, the blog outreach staffer for Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd, who hovers at about 2% in New Hampshire polls. "The payoff is particularly big because you have people who can convert readers into potential activists."

Short on graphics, Blue Hampshire, which was launched last November, resembles an electronic bulletin board. It's guided by one rule: Items have to be related to New Hampshire politics. Comments are welcome, incivility is not. Like their national counterparts, such as Daily Kos -- to which Ms. Clawson is a regular contributor -- the Blue Hampshire bloggers offer up a blend of cantankerous liberalism.

Inside the Keene Horseshoe Club's covered picnic area one summer Friday night, a hundred or so residents sat on lawn chairs and swatted mosquitoes as Gov. Richardson sweated. What was his position on trade pacts with Peru and Panama? asked one woman. Mr. Richardson looked nonplused. "Are they coming up?" (The House is likely to vote on the Peru agreement this month.)

Nearby, Michael Caulfield, who spends weekdays maintaining a Web site at Keene State College, leaned against a pole videotaping the exchange. The 37-year-old sports a red "Stop Sununu" sticker on the T-shirts he often wears to political events, a reference to the state's Republican Sen. John Sununu, who is up for re-election next year. Within days, Mr. Caulfield -- who rounds out the Blue Hampshire trio -- posted a video and critique of the event.

"Here's hoping for a more straightforward and informative interview in the future," Mr. Caulfield harrumphed on the blog.

Ms. Clawson recently traveled around New Hampshire with Mr. Edwards. Just outside Wolfeboro, Mr. Edwards's bus pulled over so the Massachusetts native could scramble on-board, even though Mr. Edwards was already late for a rally. For 10 minutes, she sat across from him and his wife, Elizabeth, and grilled the presidential hopeful, who was touring the state to talk about poverty. "His answers were really short," she says.

The day after Ms. Clawson interviewed Mr. Edwards on his campaign bus, Mr. Caulfield found a babysitter for his two young daughters and drove with his wife almost an hour to his hometown of Merrimack. The campaign had promised Mr. Caulfield his own 10-minute interview on the bus after a rally in the high school.

Mr. Caulfield sat in the audience, videotaping the 20-minute session. But when the rally ended, a campaign aide met Mr. Caulfield in the back of the room with bad news: The interview was off.

Mr. Caulfield rushed back to where Mr. Edwards was surrounded by supporters, shaking hands and signing autographs. He maneuvered his way to the front and stuck out his hand, introducing himself as a Blue Hampshire blogger and asked the former senator whether he would speak to him for the site sometime.

"I think I talked to one of your colleagues yesterday," Mr. Edwards said, adding, "We'll work on that."

Mr. Caulfield fumed. A flurry of emails began shooting between the Blue Hampshire bloggers while their contact with Mr. Edwards's campaign, Edward Vale, sent apologies and an explanation that Mr. Edwards's children wanted to go to dinner. "It was the last event of the day," says Mr. Vale, "and just got screwed up."

"This is the first time this has ever happened," Mr. Caulfield says. While it's not uncommon for the bloggers to change their schedules to meet with candidates, "no one has ever canceled or bumped us before," he said.

Mr. Caulfield's write-up of the event didn't mention the perceived snub. But Ms. Clawson, who was also unhappy about her friend's experience, didn't post a write-up of her interview with Mr. Edwards. She said she lost some of it when her digital recorder malfunctioned and later abandoned a post describing her impressions of Mr. Edwards's trek across the state. Recently, Mr. Caulfield decided not to attend an Edwards event -- even though it took place just minutes from his house. Instead, he went to see Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, who was campaigning nearby.

Connecticut's Mr. Dodd has been careful not to commit such a faux pas and has benefited as a result.

Mr. Dodd and his staff have actively courted the Blue Hampshire bloggers. Mr. Browner-Hamlin, the blog outreach staffer for Mr. Dodd, regularly posted items on Blue Hampshire. In one, he wrote enthusiastically on Mr. Dodd's Web site about meeting the "renowned" bloggers at a New Hampshire Democratic party event. Phone calls and daily emails to the bloggers with tidbits about Mr. Dodd's activities led to a steady stream of items on the Blue Hampshire site.

The more the bloggers heard about Mr. Dodd's views, the more they were impressed, Mr. Caulfield says.

On Sept. 5, Mr. Barker formally endorsed Mr. Dodd. "Chris Dodd is the strongest proponent of the progressive issues that matter most to me, and I trust him to carry those issues forward as president," he wrote.