Online cajoling the new currency (campaigning)

[ursi]

February 10, 2008
Ted Kennedy got plenty of attention when he threw in last month with Barack Obama for president. But it wasn't the liberal lion's backing - or his stemwinder of an endorsement speech - that pushed Ada Focer into the Obama column. For that, the 58-year-old Cambridge resident credits her daughter, a painter living in Brooklyn, N.Y., whose Jan. 21 e-mail to friends and family prompted Focer to take a closer look at the Illinois senator.

more stories like this"Check out this video of Barack Obama speaking at Martin Luther King Jr.'s church in Atlanta," wrote Grace Marlier in an e-mail that included a link to the speech on Obama's campaign website. "You don't have to cry like I did," she wrote, "but if you're not decided on who you're supporting presidentially, this might give you an idea of why I'm for Obama."

"That was definitely my wake-up call," said Focer, a Boston University doctoral student and teaching fellow who was leaning toward Hillary Clinton but then did more reading about Obama and wound up voting for him in Tuesday's primary.

Meanwhile, it's hard to imagine that Laurie Martinelli's aunt in Lenox was swayed much by Tom Menino, Sal DiMasi, or Therese Murray, chief marshals of the parade of pols claiming credit for helping deliver Massachusetts to Clinton. But an e-mail from Martinelli, a Dorchester lawyer, to 25 friends and relatives urging them to vote for Clinton might have done the trick. "I do think I helped change the mind of some people who were on the fence," Martinelli said Tuesday night while watching returns with a dozen friends at the Ashmont Grill.

more...

http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2008/02/10/online_cajoling_the_new_currency/