Team tries to rally Mass. liberals
From city crime to immigration laws, Massachusetts bloggers are creating a stir in political cyberspace. As the gubernatorial race nears, discussions grow heated and popular websites draw as many as 2,000 visitors daily.
David Kravitz sweeps across the Shubert Theatre stage in a black cravat and topcoat, crooning in Italian. He is the Marchese D'Obigny in the Boston Lyric Opera's production of ''La Traviata," a gossipy man-about-town who announces that the hero and heroine have split.
Hours after the curtain descends, the baritone, sans makeup, is dropping another bit of intrigue -- this time, from his home in Medford, about the campaign for Massachusetts governor.
''Democracy for America, the outgrowth of Howard Dean's presidential campaign now run by his brother Jim, has endorsed Deval Patrick for governor and has added him to its DFA-list," he types into his
Kravitz, 42, is a lawyer and opera singer who volunteered for John F. Kerry's presidential campaign. But Blue Mass. Group, the left-leaning political blog he started with two friends in late 2004, has taken on a life of its own in the last several months, becoming one of the most popular online gathering places for Massachusetts Democrats to talk about the news.
The site, www.bluemassgroup.com, boasts that 1,000 to 1,500 people visit on most weekdays. Attorney General Thomas F. Reilly's gubernatorial campaign sends the blog its press releases. Patrick and fellow candidate for governor Chris Gabrieli have sat for extended interviews with operators of the site. Next month, NECN's Chet Curtis plans a live chat with its members.
''When we started the site, I had no idea if anyone was going to come and read the thing," Kravitz said. ''We just started writing and hoped, 'If you build it, they will come.' "
A wiry guy with a quick grin, Kravitz lives in a shingled house with his wife (who, preferring news to opinion, doesn't read the blog) and an English cocker spaniel.
To help pay the bills, he does litigation work for a downtown law firm. (Further offending the stereotype of blogger-as-slacker, Kravitz served as law clerk to US Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor in 1994 and for Justice Stephen Breyer when Breyer was on an appellate court.)
His bloggers-in-arms are Charley Blandy, 33, another opera man from Medford who met Kravitz in a performance of ''Don Giovanni," and Bob Neer, 41, who played Dungeons & Dragons with Kravitz as a teenager and files from New York City, where he is completing his doctoral studies in law and history at Columbia University.
All three men volunteered for the John Kerry presidential campaign in 2004. When it was over, they were brimming with political energy, but had nowhere to channel it.
With the 2006 gubernatorial campaign approaching, Kravitz thought a blog focused on Massachusetts politics could help rally the state Democratic Party's liberal wing, which he believed had been eclipsed by a conservative establishment.
Neer, the most tech-savvy of the three, set up a basic website, and they went to work. Since then, the three men have developed distinct online voices.
Blandy is, as he puts it, ''Citizen Wonk" -- fascinated by the fine print of healthcare and energy policy, determined to figure it out for himself. Neer is the scholar, rummaging through history and international news for his fodder. Kravitz sounds off on just about anything that interests him.
Occasionally, he'll begin with a question or an invitation for comment, as he did last February, when Democrats held their statewide caucuses: ''Tell us where you are and what you're seeing!" he wrote. Over the next 24 hours, more than 130 reports from Cape Cod to North Adams streamed in, establishing a running account of the caucuses.
Having a three-man tag team running the site has helped it to thrive -- blogs are like sharks, Kravitz said, ''they have to keep moving, or they die." When one of the three needs a break, the others pick up the slack.
And in recent months, Blue Mass. Group has increasingly tapped its expanding readership for content by using a new software platform that lets anyone start a conversation, with the approval of one of the administrators.
Just how much Blue Mass. Group will shape this year's campaign for governor remains to be seen. They were invited to a debate hosted by CBS-4 on Friday, posting accounts of the exchanges among the candidates and critiquing their boasts.
The crew behind the site is optimistic its clout will grow.
© Copyright 2006 Globe Newspaper Company.
