YouTube Politics – Minnesota style

08/03/2006

BY RACHEL E. STASSEN-BERGER
Pioneer Press

YouTube has discovered Minnesota politics – and Minnesota politicians have discovered YouTube.

The popular online video sharing site YouTube.com, most well known for featuring video you watch at work when your boss isn’t watching you, now features clips from and about Minnesota politicians.

Anyone can access the site, giving campaigns and opponents direct access to voters including younger Internet-friendly voters, those in politics say.

“It allows your average voter to get our message,” said Jess McIntosh, state Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party spokeswoman.

When U.S. Senate candidates Amy Klobuchar, the Democratic Hennepin County attorney, and Mark Kennedy, a Republican congressman from Watertown, released their first campaign ads last month the ads nearly immediately popped up on the site.

And they drew eyeballs. According to YouTube statistics, each of their first ads was viewed more than 3,000 times.

Their self-promotions aren’t the only videos viewers can see about the two candidates on the site.

The DFL has posted a new video mocking Kennedy’s ad. Kennedy first two ads feature his family, his geekiness and his claim to independence. The DFL’s faux ad is titled “Makeover Mark” and includes photos and video of Kennedy with Republican luminaries, including President Bush.

There’s an anti-Klobuchar video on the site as well. It includes a lighter moment during a campaign appearance in which “she sticks her tongue out at Senator Barack Obama,’’ according to the person who posted the video. More than 1,000 people have chosen to see it.

Other campaigns are also in the YouTube act. There are little-watched videos of Minneapolis Councilman Paul Ostrow, who is running for Congress, Robert Fitzgerald, the Independence Party’s U.S. Senate candidate, and state Sen. Michele Bachmann, who is running for Congress.