Rushton on Rushton
There are those of us in Worcester who find great pleasure in harping on public personalities who don’t take advantage of the multitude of free, readily available tools available to spread a message; PR 101 stuff. City Councilor and Mayoral candidate Rick Rushton is officially off that list. Following up his two formal ad spots on youtube (1, 2) he now has a whole slew of policy videos laying out his plans in plain words.
Interested in Ricks feelings on education? Here ya go.
‘Hey Rick, what are your thoughts on local Business?’ Oh, that was easy.
What’s all this I hear about ‘3-1-1 one call to City Hall’? In Ricks own words.
Interested in Somervilles experience with 3-1-1? Here’s the Mayor of Somerville, Joseph Curtatone and his thoughts on the plan.
Not enough 3-1-1 yet? Maybe Sean Murphy, the Director of Constituent Services for the city of Somerville can help you with that.
This is how a campaign, even a local one, should be run. It’s not make or break material here, on the contrary it’s pretty basic stuff. But it take a lot of the guess work out of who stands for what in a city with a low voter turn-out and light media coverage of the municipal circuit. So to the other 16,835 people running for At-Large seats this year, please get off your asses and do something besides assume I know who you are and what you stand for. Thank you in advance.
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3 Responses to “Rushton on Rushton”
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Y’know, I like the idea of using the net to spread ideas, but I don’t know if this particular example is a good use of time and resources. If you’ve made a TV spot, sure, post it to YouTube, what the hell. But most of these look longer than TV ads, and even his most-watched YouTube videos have 253 views at this point. Is 253 people watching your ad worth the effort, considering that’s probably fewer viewers than any time any single radio or TV ad is run? I dunno.
P.S. For what it’s worth, Grace Ross posted a podcast about the connection with Federal Food Stamp funding and the local economy back in June:
http://www.grace4worcester.org/podcast-about-the-food-stamp-challenge
P.P.S. And plenty of these candidates have made recent appearances on Channel 13 that are available on-line, both in Flash and broadcast-quality mpeg2 formats:
http://wccatv.com/soapbox
I see that both Lukes and Irish have had more than 100 people check out their WCCA clips, certainly in the same range as Rushton’s 253 views.
The big deal in Rushton’s case, of course, is that these are focused ads, not conversations, and that they are coming straight from the campaigns, not local media orgs.
I bet there are really creative, engaging ways that local pols could use YouTube, and that’s where I’d like to set the bar. Just posting a YouTube video, whether of yourself getting kicked in the crotch or yourself pointing at local buildings, is too easy to be remarkable.
Thats the whole point, isn’t it? It’s so easy the only thing remarkable is not doing it.
some politicians come across pretty crappy, as he does to me. i mean, in more ways than just appearances. some politicians should should be advised to think about the effect their youtube and appearances on local tv may have on voters. including the deadpan style or self serving grandstanding at council meetings. many times i sense a lack of convincing honesty and soul. it makes for a tough choice. but the free and readily available media tools are better than nothing i guess. oh, i did a laugh at how uncomfortable Rushton seemed to be seated so close to Lukes on WCCA’s forum last night. i was waiting for the foaming at the mouth in the brief but lively exchange. that spoke volumes.