New Haven Independent

Quinnipiac University managed to get Lieberman for Senate spokesman Dan Gerstein (at left in photo), Lamont for Senate’s Liz DuPont-Diehl, DeStefano for Governor’s Derek Slap (at right in photo), and Rich Harris of the Rell reelection campaign to participate together on a panel about this fall’s elections — and play nice the whole time.

About 60 political science and public relations students and profs gathered for the breakfast discussion, moderated by Rick Hancock, a former Fox 61 political reporter who’s now assistant dean of Quinnipiac’s communications school.

Besides refraining from trashing each other’s campaigns, the usually tart-tongued quartet sang a unified refrain about the transformative emergence of blogs, e-mail, and other tools of the Internet.

“This is a revolution in not just politics, but democracy,” said Gerstein, whose candidate was web-slapped to defeat in the Aug. 8 Democratic primary and is now running in the general election on the “Connecticut for Lieberman” Party line. “It’s one of the most promising trends in my lifetime.”

Gerstein said the Lamont crew “did a brilliant job of using technology to build a support base and organize a campaign” in the primary. The campaign benefited from its own and a nationwide crop of independent blogs , from e-mail fund-raising and volunteer-drafting efforts, as well as from a general Internet buzz that catapulted a political unknown into a contender against an internationally recognized three-term incumbent . “Ten years from now it will probably be looked at as a model for how campaigns will be run,” Gerstein predicted. Soon, he said, voters will receive get-out-to-the-polls text messages on their cell phones on election day.

Derek Slap boasted that his candidate, Democrat DeStefano, not only has a campaign blog — he blogs himself, on My Left Nutmeg.

“We have found it is a powerful way not only to get our message out, but to hear constituents’ concerns,” “bypass the media,” and “speak directly to voters,” Slap reported.

The web presence of Destefano opponent in the governor’s race, Republican M. Jodi Rell, is a still a work in progress, spokesman Rich Harris (at left in photo) conceded. Even her web page is on its “third major iteration” and “still staging.”

Harris noted how in the primary, coverage of the races on blogs often migrated to, and set the tone for, the mainstream media. He declared himself a fan of Connecticut Local Politics, which has emerged as the go-to campaign blog trusted by all sides of the political aisle.

And yet… Rell has a dougle-digit lead over DeStefano in the polls. Lieberman leads Lamont.

Explanation?

“I don’t think [the web] is as big a part of the [general election] as it has been in the primary,” Harris offered.

Suggested Gerstein: The revolution hasn’t fully taken place yet.

“There’s a big generation gap in the use of technology,” Gerstein said. At this point, “very few people in the grand scheme of things use” blogs to get information. That will eventually change, he predicted.

DuPont-Diehl (in photo next to Harris), of the Lamont camp, recalled an interview CNN conducted with her candidate during the primary. The reporter suggested that the web legions supported him were merely young people who rarely participate in politics. A 50 year-old Lamont supporter in the room, a blogger, leaned over to DuPont-Diehl. “Do I loook like some kid sitting in my basement?” she whispered.

“The stereotypes are being blown away very quickly,” DuPont-Diehl told the Quinnipiac audience.

“Google is now a verb,” DuPont-Diehl noted. “The pace of change is really incredible.”