Can’t be at the Democrats’ convention this week? No problem. You can be there virtually, with top Maryland Democrats and party officials blogging, Twittering and YouTubing, in addition to the more “traditional” cell phones, BlackBerrys and long-distance conference calls.
Gov. Martin O’Malley got the ball rolling Saturday on his revised campaign Web site, martinomalley.com. By Monday afternoon, he had already posted 14 “tweets,” including this one: “We had the first delegation breakfast this morning. Senator Gary Hart spoke about the need to restore America’s moral standing in the world.”
Other O’Malley tweets were more prosaic, such as this one Sunday: “I saw Spike Lee having lunch at the delegation hotel with my old friend Kwaisi Mfume,” misspelling the former congressman’s first name, Kweisi.
O’Malley spokesman Rick Abbruzzese said the tweets and blog are written by the governor on his BlackBerry or by his staff.
Twitter is a free service that can communicate on Web, the phone, or instant messaging.
Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown sent out his first and perhaps final blog Sunday evening, talking about the choice of Sen. Joseph Biden and the view of the Rocky Mountains from his hotel window. He headed back to Maryland Monday afternoon to be with his family following the shooting death of his cousin Cathy Brown in Gaithersburg Sunday.
The Maryland Democratic Party has posted YouTube snippets of O’Malley at breakfast on the home page of its Web site, mddems.org. Party communications director David Paulson said Hart also noted that O’Malley, who was a field director for Hart in 1984, was one of four workers in that campaign who later became governors.
Comptroller Peter Franchot is blogging and Twittering at Franchot.com, but much less than O’Malley.
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer from Southern Maryland did a traditional conference call with local reporters in which he previewed his speech to the convention tonight about the failures of the Bush administration. He acknowledged the “hurt feelings” and “disappointment” among supporters of Hillary Clinton, but said, “Obama won the nomination of his party fair and square.”
Hoyer is also the official parliamentarian of the convention, but said, “I don’t expect to make many judgments” on the rules since “the decisions have been made by the time we get there.”
