"A lot of corporate givers are very pragmatic," said Lawrence M. Noble, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics. "They want to make sure they can get access."
The Center for Responsive Politics runs Opensecrets.org, the primary source of data for both BuyBlue.org and ChoosetheBlue.com, but it does not endorse the message of either Web site.
 
Friday's Question:
| | |
|
Noble said, "It's an interesting use of the data."
Although both groups cite the same sources of data, their information does not always match. BuyBlue.org identifies online retailer Amazon.com as a "red" company, giving 61 percent to Republican candidates; ChoosetheBlue.com says Amazon.com is "blue."
"We would like to be known as the most customer-centric company on the planet," Amazon.com spokesman Craig Berman said. "However it's being perceived, the Amazon.com PAC supports neither party."
Trying to affect a company's policies with pocketbook activism is not new. But to be effective, said Michael Cornfield, senior research consultant to the Pew Study of Internet and American Life, it must hit the bottom line. At this point, "it's a great idea," he said. But only when the groups can put a dollar figure on where people choose to shop for political reasons will the campaign rise to the level of political action.
It is historically difficult to get consumer campaigns and boycotts off the ground, according to Noble. And it is difficult to affect the bottom line of companies as large as Anheuser-Busch, May Department Stores (which owns Hecht's and Filene's Basement) and Marriott, which are identified as Republican supporters.
"It will be interesting to see if these Web sites or this movement has a bottom-line impact on any of these businesses," Noble said.
Both BuyBlue.org and ChoosetheBlue.com have received a huge boost from the popularity of Web logs or blogs. After BuyBlue.org was launched on Dec. 3, the founders began e-mailing the link to friends and associates. They posted the Web site address on bulletin boards where Internet bloggers distributed it to a wider audience. After two weeks, the site gets as many as 50,000 visits a day.
BuyBlue.org has no marketing budget. The site is run on $500 in donations and $700 from Brooks's pocket. But through an e-mail campaign and persistent linking in the blogosphere, it has collected more than 4,300 e-mails for its online database.
BuyBlue.org is seeking legal status as a nonprofit organization in California and hopes to parlay the site's initial success into a future as a Web destination with more in-depth information on corporate behavior in politics for liberal activists.
ChoosetheBlue.com has been less ambitious. "We came up with the idea and launched it seven days later," Ann Duvall said. The site went up just before Thanksgiving, and Duvall circulated the link among a small group of friends. "We didn't really think that far ahead."
