Donnelly's a blogger now!

Mayoral candidate Tom Donnelly has sunk to my level!

That is to say, he wrote a blog post. It's over at the Fitchburg Voice blog, and you can read it at this link.

Here's some of the blogtastic blogging Tom blogged:

This is the first time I have written on a Blog, and this campaign has been a learning experience about the role of the internet in local politics.

I have enjoyed working with my campaign volunteers in developing our campaign web
site http://www.donnellyformayor.com/ and I have read with interest some of the local Blogs which have been discussing the mayoral election. There is no question that the internet will play a more important role in politics in the next few years.

Ooh! Donnelly actually reads blogs! That's... actually not that surprising.

There are those who say blogs won't shape the election. I actually agree with that in some ways, since most voters don't read blogs and couldn't care less what they say. There's another side to things though...

Both the candidates and many "regular citizens" who are politically interested actually do read some of these ramblings. DeSalvatore obviously does, or he wouldn't have a statement on his website telling people not to listen to blogs. I'm quite confident Lisa Wong does as well, and Donnelly has just publicly lost his blogging virginity. Dionne I think mostly sticks to reading telegraphs from the Crimean War.

Still, three out of four!

The point of a blog, of course, is not to shape events. It's to shape discussions. Personally, I wasn't comfortable that the only political analysis in town used to come from the Sentinel's opinion pages and the people who post to Save Fitchburg. Which is why I started this blog.

If you look at the link list on the right of this page, you'll see several other blogs that have started more recently and also have their own viewpoints to present. Generally these are viewpoints that weren't being well-represented anywhere else. The more the merrier! To paraphrase Jello Biafra: "Don't hate the media, become the media!"

Hopefully some of the discussions on the local blogs at least make the candidates think a bit more carefully about these issues. They may or may not agree with any particular point, but at least they're thinking. And more importantly, they know what their constituents are thinking about. If the discussion were controlled by just a couple of outlets it wouldn't come close to representing the majority of citizens. It still doesn't, but the more people who speak up the better we can be represented. If the candidates never know about your concerns they'll never be able to help with them.

Unfortunately, it's only a matter of time before some of the commenters at Save Fitchburg start claiming that Donnelly has hurt himself by appearing on ReallyRachel's site. This is because those commenters aren't very bright, and also really dislike Rachel. I'm pretty sure most people who will be voting don't know her or particularly care.

Anyway, saying Donnelly would be hurt by this would be like saying that Democrats won't vote for a candidate if they appear on FOX News. Which is stupid. Just because you hate the medium doesn't mean you'll hate everyone who appears on it. Similarly, what obviously matters here is what Donnelly says. Not who runs the site where he says it.

That was a long digression. How bloggarific!

Donnelly's blog post itself is not all that blogtacular. Just a brief rundown of his background and so forth, plus some plugs for his website (which as previously noted isn't too bad). But it's nice to have him out there contributing to the discussion. At the time of this writing there are no comments on the post, so get with it and go ask him something!

All the candidates would do well to make themselves available in this way. So nicely done, Tom.



Disclaimer: I actually hate any word that has "blog-" stuck on the front. Like "blogtacular". My use of such words in this post does not constitute an endorsement of them.