(AL-07 is going to be an interesting race next year. - promoted by countrycat)
Elect Women Magazine has a great feature on AL-07 Congressional Candidate Shelia Smoot. According to facts on Elect Women Magazine Website
*Women make up only 17% of the members of Congress * Only 10% of women have ever thought about running for office, compared with 20% of men. Lawless and Fox (2005)
Smoot aims to become the First African American female elected to Congress from Alabama. Alabama currently has no female members of Congress.
The article also makes mention of the Smoot campaign utilizing social media and grassroots efforts.
So far Smoot is very excitied about the direction of her campaign. She recently placed her 15-year-old daughter in charge of part of her campaign called Teens for Smoot and the response from the young people has been overwhelming. “The young people especially like that they can follow me on Facebook and Twitter,” said Smoot. Smoot has also organized a group called Seasoned Citizens for Smoot, which is a group of senior citizens in the District that she had engaged in order to hear their concerns.
Most of the Federal political campaigns in this state seem to be doing a much better job of engaging supporters through social media and social networking tools. Hopefully the statewide and even legislative candidates will begin following suit. This should be a benefit to the informed voters in the 2010 election and allow many more to become part of the political process.
