Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney has added a blog-savvy consultant to his presidential campaign team, and it looks like the pick may have had something to do with his weekend trip to Tennessee: Romney has hired Stephen Smith to lead his online communications team. Smith most recently worked for Sen. Bill Frist at VOLPAC, where he oversaw the website and handled outreach to bloggers.
HumanEvents.com reports:
The tech-savvy Smith joins two other highly respected Republicans who recently signed on with Romney. Former RNC Research Director Matt Rhoades and Kevin Madden, who served as House Majority Leader John Boehner’s spokesman, form the nucleus of Romney’s likely campaign team.
A source with knowledge of Smith’s hiring said Smith will play a key role in the design of a campaign website, should Romney decided to run. Romney is spending the holidays with his family in Utah and plans to make a decision shortly thereafter.
At VOLPAC, Smith was responsible for coordinating Frist’s interaction with bloggers, which included several one-on-one interviews, conference calls and a group meeting with bloggers that took place in the majority leader’s office. Smith was also responsible for several activism projects on VOLPAC’s site, such as Blogging for Bolton. He advised Frist to endorse Rightroots, the online grassroots fundraising effort that raised nearly $300,000 for conservative candidates.
Just last week, after facing criticism from bloggers over his gay-rights stance, the Right Angle's Matt Lewis advised Romney to hire a blogger. His decision should be well received in the blogosphere for acting sooner rather than later.
The story goes on to note that Sen. John McCain has reached out and hired blog talent, but former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani hasn't. He should, and soon - the blogosphere and related social media such as YouTube are going to play an important role in all future campaigns. In fact, they already have. Ask former future presidential candidate George "Macaca" Allen.
» MittTube 2 from postpolitical
David All takes a look at the comment section of the BlogPI YouChoose post (discussed earlier here) and makes a find. Apparently Stephen Smith was all over the thing: What I find most interesting is that Mitt’s eGuy, Stephen Smith, left a comment on ... [Read More]
Tracked on: April 16, 2007 10:38 AM | Permalink to Trackback