Pressing the Flesh Online:   

Articles in this section: Pressing the Flesh Online 'We're in the Middle of a Cyberwar' The Mouse That Roars Bridging the Digital Divide

The Web had its political coming of age last year, in Minnesota, in Jesse Ventura's successful bid for the governorship. An independent with no party structure or endorsements, all he had was fame, blunt-spoken ideas — and the Net. For months Ventura had no physical "headquarters," just an ever-growing e-mail list. Two thirds of his fund-raising pledges arrived via the Internet. His final, three-day, get-out-the-vote bus trip was organized by e-mail. Ventura's site never was fancy. No elaborate graphics. It was a simple, text-based community of Ventura fans. The network generated a surge at the end, especially among young, new voters — an age group, not coincidentally, that grew up online. He won half the under-30 vote in a three-way race. "The Internet didn't win it for us," says Ventura Webmaster Phil Madsen, "but we couldn't have won without it."

The Y2K presidential campaigns have gone to school on the Ventura story. Unlike "The Body," they care about appearances. As much to show their Net savvy as to sign up volunteers, the campaigns have sites full of Java-scripted doodads, interactive features and digitized daily photos from the hustings. On Al Gore's, surfers can enter a "just for kids" area, check out voter-registration requirements by clicking on a map of the United States or download computer wallpaper decorated with the Gore logo. Several campaigns offer versions of their sites in Spanish and links to independent news outlets. The Gore and Forbes sites are perhaps the most elaborately organized; Bush's the most intent on showing off the candidate himself. "Campaigns tend to reflect the candidate," says Phil Noble, an online-politics consultant. "And so do the sites."

It's important to be convincingly digital because the voters increasingly are. According to a new survey by the University of California, Santa Barbara, half of all adults now have access to the Internet either at home or at work, and more than half of them at one time or another have used the Net to delve into political topics. By the end of last year, more than 36 million Americans were getting news at least once a week from the Internet — more than triple the number of three years earlier. Among the states, New Hampshire is second (behind only Alaska) in the percentage of voters online. The Granite State — where primary rules give independents extraordinary power — seems destined to be the place in which digital and physical campaigning will merge.