Chris Bowers

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Chris Bowers is a blogger for MyDD. His focus is polling and analysis of the political blogosphere. He tends towards data-driven analysis, such as his partisan index, a ranking of how far each state in the United States leans towards a political party.

Bowers is also a member of the Pennsylvania State Democratic Committee, representing the 8th district of the Pennsylvania State Senate, and a resident of Philadelphia. Bowers is known among progressive bloggers as a particularly strong supporter of organized labor, and as a former labor organizer.

Bowers has overseen netroots surveys that he says demonstrate that progressive Internet activists are driven more by partisanship and pragmatism than far-left ideology, and that show bloggers are influential on rank and file Democrats. He has also argued that bloggers may have the ability to reduce Hillary Clinton's popularity among Democrats.

[edit] John Edwards Staff-Blogger Controversy

In February 2007, Bowers stated "I have a pretty vicious rant and an important action alert lined up, but I am waiting to hear from the Edwards camp..."[[1]] about the controversy over bloggers Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwen, recently hired by John Edwards. When Edwards announced he would not fire the bloggers, Bowers announced he considered the event significant enough to tip him into support Edwards in the 2008 Democratic Presidential primary[[2]]. Further, he initiated a blogger campaign to email traditional media outlets with additional facts about William Donahue and the blogger employed by Republican Presidential candidate John McCain, Patrick J. Hynes. Bowers reported[[3]] some success in these efforts in that several media outlets (including the Associated Press) did report on the items Bowers suggested were relevant.

[edit] Other Notable Activities

Bowers first achieved notoriety as a blogger for being the first to post the leaked exit-polling data during the 2004 Presidential Election, showing John Kerry in the lead.

During the 2006 election, Bowers again came into the spotlight for two internet campaigns he initiated. The first[[4]] was called "Use It or Lose It" where he and other bloggers analyzed the FEC reports for "safe" Democrats and implored them to donate some of their campaign finance reserves to other Democratic candidates in more competitive elections. As a result of this campaign, several Democrats did donate additional money, including John Kerry and Barney Frank.

The second campaign was more controversial. Bowers initiated[[5]] a Google bomb campaign against a list of Republican candidates. The idea was to elevate perceived negative stories in traditional media outlets about these candidates in Google searches. Bowers attempted to distinguish this from other well-known Google bombs, such as Miserable Failure or Flip Flop search terms returning biographies of George W. Bush and John Kerry during the 2004 election. Bowers intended his campaign to only elevate serious and factual articles about the targets.