This being San Francisco—which is if not the heart at least the aorta of the intertubes—one would expect all its candidates to have web savvy campaigns. I mean come on this is 2007! If the little town of Medicine Park, OK (pop. ~400) can have a blog, shouldn’t we expect our politicians to be a bit more internet-slick?

Recap of Round I

In Round I, I covered the web campaigns of Chicken John and Gavin Newsom. Neither of them got very many style-points for their web presence, but Chicken John was the winner of that bout with his more personal and direct internet campaign.

The judges reconsider

However, it seems that the judges missed something in their review: as it turns out, the Gavin Newsom campaign, Act Locally SF*, has a flickr account, and they have an active YouTube campaign. Mostly it’s just a bunch of long rambling unedited boring meetings, but I love his Pet Peeves on the Streets series!

The Pet Peeves on the Streets video series have Gavin Newsom himself interviewing random people on the street and in barbershops asking what their pet peeve is with San Francisco. The series is a few months old at this point, but they are a good attempt to reach out to people the way that this new social web is meant to. We need to see more campaign ideas like this.

So with this revelation, I gotta give the YouTube Stardom category over to Gavin Newsom, and I’d say the Web 2.0 Social Aptitude category is now a tie.

With this turnover, Gavin Newsom is now in the lead as the top 21st century political candidate of San Francisco!

A scrappy new contender

However, Gavin Newsom shouldn’t get too cocky. He only won that one by a nose and as Scott Beale of Laughing Squid reports, Josh Wolf seems to be coming out with both guns blazing. He’s got a new blog, Josh Wolf for Mayor and a campaign video. The judges have yet to completely review but they did have this to say:

“Please please next time get a tripod and don’t ever sit in front of a nauseatingly bright greenscreen!!!”**

So stay tuned for Round II where it’s the stiff backed experienced politico Gavin Newsom against the slouched over activist Josh Wolf!

* I gotta say though that Act Locally SF is a terrible campaign name. It sounds more like a generic NGO then a campaign. Why not just Gavin Newsom 2007?

** Bonus Points go to anyone out there who takes Josh Wolf’s video and remixes it using the greenscreen background for something Dumb. Note: that’s Dumb with a capital D—ya know the kind of Dumb that’s actually funny and creative.

Chicken John, SF Mayoral Candidate, has started a blog: Chicken John Rinaldi For Mayor of San Francisco, which includes an instructional video to help collect signatures. He needs to collect 10,000 signatures by Wednesday, July 25th to get on the ballot — go help him out!

Chicken’s joined facebook too on the advice of Scott Beale of LaughingSquid. Chicken’s also on that den of iniquity and bad design myspace and tribe. Next thing we know he’ll be on Twitter, Flickr, Pownce, Digg, Delicious, and of course YouTube — well actually Chicken is already on YouTube with a video of him eating a lightbulb.

So let’s tally up the scores of who’s the more 21st Century political candidate…

Google Name Recognition

• Gavin Newsom – 698,000 search results and an extensive wikipedia entry
• Chicken John – 78,300 search results and a pitifully small stub of a wikipedia entry

Web 2.0 Social Aptitude

• Chicken John – 1 facebook profile, 1 myspace profile, 1 tribe profile
• Gavin Newsom – 3 facebook profiles, 3 myspace profiles, and one Gavin Newsom Sucks myspace profile. {While Gavin wins by sheer number of profiles I have a strange feeling they aren’t really him, so I had to give this one to Chicken}

Blog-o-sphere Cred

• Chicken John – 1 fresh off the presses mayoral blog written by the man himself (when he doesn’t have the cold that is); hosted at Wordpress.com but with his own domain which adds a couple more cred points
• Gavin Newsom – 1 boring PR spewing pseudo-blog written by the mayoral toadies in Newsom’s name; hosted as a subdomain on Typepad. And 1 other boring PR spewing pseudo-blog with an unknown CMS with a lousy old HTML 4.01 Transitional doctype.

YouTube Stardom

• Chicken John – Aforementioned Chicken John eating a lightbulb and Chicken John Bus Trip to Locke, CA ( Footage of the Chicken John Bus Trip to Locke. With footage of Dammit the Wonder Dog)
• Gavin Newsom – Gavin’s meltdown and Gavin Newsom & the Man Code (reflect on Gavin Newsom’s betrayal of a good friend.)

From a mayoral gravitas perspective, I don’t think either candidate wins in this department.

So there you have it! Chicken John is the better 21st century political candidate! Gavin is more searchable by far, but Chicken’s web presence is more personal and web 2.0 connected — quantity vs quality.

Unfortunately, for elections it’s quantity that wins. No matter though it’s always worth it to add that little something else to spice up the pot, so go help Chicken John by signing to get him on the ballot!