SAN FRANCISCO - When Republican gubernatorial candidate Neel Kashkari made national news walking the streets as a homeless man looking for work, he illustrated how tech-savvy California political figures are stealing a page from the Silicon Valley and Hollywood playbooks: It's all about going viral.

Within 24 hours of revealing his unorthodox six-day foray on the streets of Fresno, Kashkari hit the social media jackpot, trending on Twitter with nearly 5,000 tweets and reaping 70,000 views for a 10-minute video he posted to Facebook.

The video documented the GOP candidate roaming the town with a five o'clock shadow, a toothbrush and $40 as he looked for a job, and ended with Kashkari's findings: He couldn't even spot a "help wanted" sign, let alone land gainful employment.

Traditional media also ate it up. A Google search showed the story ran in 200 newspapers, with Kashkari scoring a rare grand slam for a California candidate: coverage in all four major national papers, the New York Times, the Washington Post, USA Today and the Wall Street Journal.
Then came the fundraising payoff: In the days since he went to Fresno, "Neel has raised over $200,000," said Mary-Sarah Kinner, his campaign spokeswoman.

A stunt? Sure
Kashkari was asked at a press conference if his Fresno odyssey, in which he ate at a homeless shelter and was rousted by police as he tried to sleep on park benches, was a political stunt.
"Absolutely," he said.

Trailing Gov. Jerry Brown by 20 points in the polls and by roughly $20 million in campaign cash, Kashkari said his goal was simple: to shine a spotlight on the travails of average Californians still being squeezed by a struggling economy.

The traditional move of just calling a press conference, he argued, wouldn't have gotten the attention of Brown, the media or the voters.

The frank admission highlights that unlike Brown, 76, the 41-year-old Kashkari is part of a generation of candidates attuned to social media's ability to shape campaign dialogue.

"In this hyper-social media world with mushrooming ideas, it's more and more about what can actually break through and what can get people's attention," said Peter Leyden, founder of Reinventors, a new-media firm in San Francisco that works with elected officials and government to introduce new ideas.

With a flurry of websites and apps fighting for voters' attention on the political stage, "a smart, sober idea, well reasoned, is just not going to lift off in the ways it used to," Leyden said. (Source: San Francisco Chronicle)

Story Date: August 12, 2014