In June 2009, I published a piece on SayfieReview.com which garnered much buzz here in Florida, especially as it related to Marco Rubio's insurgent fight against Charlie Crist for the United States Senate. In the piece, I argued that with the right candidate and the right message, the internet could level the playing field and help reverse the conventional wisdom that you must run a "Traditional 3M" campaign to get elected to office. I argued that the Traditional 3M model was based on big money to launch a campaign, followed by momentum, with the candidate's message being a distant third priority. This model can be diagrammed like this:
MONEY → MOMENTUM → MESSAGE
Using the internet to drive message directly to voters, victory is now possible for candidates who don’t have big money to kick-start their campaigns, by following a “New 3M” model that looks like this:
MESSAGE → MOMENTUM → MONEY
We saw
Marco Rubio articulate the New 3M Model time and time again in 2010, and now, it seems Texas Railroad Commissioner Michael Williams is articulating the exact same message in his battle for the United States Senate in 2012. Hear what Williams had to say in an interview with the Texas Tribune yesterday:
