Large metropolitan areas such as San Francisco, Denver, Dallas and Los Angeles garner much of the MSMs attention, but small towns like Columbus, Kentucky and Eureka, California are far from the political limelight.  The power of the Internet is leveling this gap.  Shawn Dixon, a politically passionate Columbus native who is an Edwards’ supporter and a law-student at the New York University School of Law, utilized Web tools such as social networking sites to organize Columbus area residents to win the Edwards Eventful challenge.

First, Dixon started to mobilize his friends to support the requested visit of Edwards in Columbus through the Eventful website, a web-based-event-planning site. Then, Dixon continued his actions on Facebook and MySpace. On Facebook, 800 friends joined the event to help push Columbus to victory in the Eventful challenge.  John Edwards is expected to visit Columbus in early October.

Shawn Dixon asserts he supports Edwards partially because of plan to revitalize rural America.  For too long, candidates have been flying from coast to coast raising money, but ignoring the mostly rural, middle of the nation.  Dixon used the power of the Web to organize people to demand the appearance of a presidential contender.  In the future, social networking sites will be used to force candidates to face voters concerns because Facebook and Eventful provide a tool for people to unite and create political clout.  Dixon is one of the first, but certainly will not be the last the harness this power.