Micah Sifry, eCampaign Director has posted an excellent analysis of the Rasiej for Public Advocate campaign. Rasiej was running to be the Public Advocate (sort of deputy mayor) for New York City. His campaign was full of great new ideas including free wifi across the city. He had blogs, a Google Maps based pot-hole tracker to show what can be done with the Internet and encourage small online donations instead of currying big name support.
Unfortunately he only polled 5.17% coming in 4th out of 6 candidates for the Democratic primary – and that was that.
There's loads of good e-democracy stuff in the article which I won't bother repeating but of note for all, not just e-democracy folk, is their bitter disappointment with how little online advertising delivered for them.
I come away from reading the analysis feeling there's lots of positive things to take from more open, online campaigns but you can't forget the meat and potatoes of politics – people and particularly big name support (such as ex-presidents, mayors etc).
Jason Kitcat 