Internet killed the slate mailer star

In recent elections, City Council seats have often been won by campaigns of glossy mailers backed by political parties, unions, and other interest groups. It was thought by the Cardiff and Leucadia "activists" that New Encinitas would generally vote based on mailers, signs, and endorsements.

Last week's landslide results certainly seem to have changed that. The sleeping giant of Middle Encinitas has awoken. Some of this can be attributed to the development threat of the General Plan Update, and the backlash it created in the Encinitas Right to Vote movement.

But are broader cultural and technological trends at work too?

Pew Research says the Internet is taking an increasingly important role in informing voters.


The Pew study is generally referring to national elections, but I think we're seeing even stronger trends in local elections. Coverage of Encinitas issues in the Union-Tribune, North County Times, and San Diego television stations is minimal. Even the Coast News has too little space in its weekly format to cover everything important in Encinitas city government.  Filling the void, perhaps for the first time for many Encinitas voters, is the Internet.

Some of the candidates understood the trend.  Lisa Shaffer's web site was the most informative, by far, of all the council candidates. Jerome Stocks didn't even have a web site until late in the campaign. Before that, his Internet presence was limited to occasional posts on County GOP blog SDRostra, and often ill-considered comment wars on Patch and other news sites and blogs. Teresa Barth's e-mail newsletter kept hundreds of subscribers informed on local issues with dozens of links in each issue to news and opinion sources.

The bigger impact, however, was likely not from the campaign sites, but from local news and opinion sites, both professional and amateur. This was the first campaign season that Encinitas Patch was in full swing, and it has been a heavily-trafficked forum for both news and opinion. Long-time civic watchdog Leucadia Blog is still going strong, and worth reading far beyond the borders of Leucadia. Without sites like Patch and LB, it would be hard to keep up with everything that's happening. And people might just be tempted to re-elect incumbents based on a 98% satisfaction survey.

In his farewell speech, Congressman Ron Paul called the Internet the alternative to the "government - media complex." Locally, he could have been referring to Papa Doug's Union-Tribune and its ties to powerful developers and their politicians. In an era of concentration of power and collusion between Big Business and Big Government, Small Internet remains a remarkably effective weapon of dissent.