January 29, 2007

Bloggers Gone Wild

ABC News has a fascinating story, headlined Blogging Gone Wild, out of the Virginia state legislature, where the minority Democratic Party is using modern video technology in its latest political tactic against the Republican majority. There's a lesson in this for Republicans in the Tennessee legislature...

Anger over Republicans killing bills without recording the vote, Democratic operatives began videotaping early morning and late-night statehouse proceedings and posting them on their assembly's blog and the Internet-based video site YouTube. "We're providing openness and access to Virginia government," said Mark Bergman, spokesman for the Virginia Democratic Party.

Bergman argues that the videos are the only way for Virginians to see these committee proceedings because the Republican majority changed the rules in 2006 to allow off-hour committee and subcommittee votes to go unrecorded. Last week, House Republicans in Virginia defeated a Democratic measure without recording the vote that would have raised the state's minimum wage.

"They are scheduling these major votes in the wee hours of the morning or late at night, when no one from the public or press is there to see it," Bergman said. "Two or three members could effectively kill a bill at 7:30…in the morning when nobody's there and there's no record of the vote."

Bergman said Virginia Democrats have gotten good at using the Internet and video as a political tactic, and cited newly-elected Virginia Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., as a recruit of Virginia's blogging community. The Webb campaign made major gains after a caught-on-tape campaign blunder featuring Virginia Republican Sen. George Allen calling a Webb volunteer of South Asian descent a "macaca" started making rounds on the Internet.

But Virginia Republicans said the video recordings of legislative proceedings have nothing to do with open government, instead accusing the Democrats of playing "gotcha" politics. "It's an effort to demonize Republicans," said Shaun Kenney, communications director for the Virginia Republican Party. "It's about targeting and embarrassing Republican delegates," he said.

Technology such as cheap digital video cameras, blogs and YouTube are wonderful tools for opening government up to more transparency and honesty, and both sides ought to use them. And the Virginia Republicans really ought to put an end to unrecorded votes.

There's a lesson in this for Republicans in the Tennessee state House, where House Speaker Jimmy Naifeh's Democrat-run committees and subcommittees have often killed Republican legislation on unrecorded voice votes of dubious numerical majority. Get yourself some video cameras, a YouTube account and a blog and start showing the people of Tennessee what's really going on.

Cross-posted as The Macaca Effect at
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