John Hawkins of Right Wing News will be consulting for the Duncan Hunter campaign to increase Hunter's presence on the web. This demonstrates some Internet savvy on the part of Hunter (or at least his consultants) because Hawkins is a great choice:
A little more than a week ago, I mentioned that I had gotten a gig helping one of the presidential contenders build up his web presence, but that I couldn't mention who it was at the time. When they gave me the go ahead, I promised to post again and give you all the details. Well, at long last, that time has now come.
On February 3, Nathan Tabor from TCV Media got in touch with me and asked if I'd be interested in consulting for the Duncan Hunter campaign. We bantered back and forth, came to a basic understanding that Saturday, and then finalized the deal the next day. Long story short, TCV Media brought me on board to be their point person in building up buzz for Duncan Hunter online.
Hawkins has been around for awhile and he knows many conservative bloggers, I couldn't think of a better choice if you wanted to increase your name recognition in the conservative blogosphere. His savvy in creating goodwill with bloggers by linking to them, promoting their posts and polling their opinion is a skill that could be useful to the Hunter campaign.
And I thought that it was smart not to commit to the length of the entire campaign so that Hawkins would be able to continue blogging about the presidential race:
I agreed to work a maximum of 3 months for the campaign -- which should be, in my estimation anyway, plenty of time to give Hunter a huge boost in name recognition and prominence in the blogosphere.Liking Hunter the way he does, there probably wouldn't have been much of a difference in his blogging anyway but it's nice to see that he is trying to be accountable to his readers and not cross the line into the unethical.Additionally, while I am working on the campaign, I'm not planning to blog about any of the 2008 Republican contenders on RWN unless a story too big to ignore hits the wires. That's because I don't want to come across like a shill for Duncan if I eviscerate one of his opponents or talk him up. Additionally, if I'm done by May of 2007, at the latest, it's not as if it will be too late to get in on the serious 2008 discussions.
