Show your outrage - and give us your e-mail address!

Colorado liberals have mastered the art of building massive grassroots e-mail lists. Their most effective tool in doing so? Facilitating angry constituents in writing letters to political opponents, automatically capturing personal contact information in the process. It's a shrewd scheme, one honed through years of technological R&D that has largely left Republicans in the dust when it comes to online campaigning.

Ritter for Governor

Liberal organizers at ProgressNow have built a massive statewide database of activists - targeted by political interest and zip code - through years of viral electionic petition campaigns. The group's rabblerouser-in-chief, Michael Huttner, said in a speech last year the campaigns may not always be successful in creating political change, but they are incredibly efficient at refining their list for future use. Anyone who signed on to a recent campaign targeting CU President Bruce Benson, for instance, is a prime target for future e-mails on education issues. Similar database queries could yield a list of activists passionate about the environment, for instance.

Gov. Bill Ritter's re-election campaign is also banking on the power of microtargeting. Supporters were recently asked to write letters to Congressman Mike Coffman, R-Aurora, and object to his characterization of Ritter as "sympathetic" to terrorists in signing legislation to block expansion of the Army's Piñon Canyon Maneuver Site. Sending a nastygram to Coffman was as easy as entering contact information and clicking "send."

But according to Jacque Ponder, Coffman’s spokesperson, his office hasn’t received any e-mail from the online form. Coffman’s office only received nine total messages on the subject, only two of which even mentioned Ritter.

A test e-mail sent from Ritter's Web site was not received by Coffman's office, but did result in an immediate subscription to Ritter's campaign list.

Republican candidates would be well-advised to study the online campaign tactics employed on the other side of the aisle. Campaigns will continue to find new ways to identify supporters, but it would be more to disclose the subscription up front and provide for an opt-out in advance. It wouldn't hurt to deliver their messages, either.