"They said, `Go raise $100,000 and then we'll see,'" Brautigam said. "We raised $100,000, and they didn't move."

Woodruff had been monitoring Web sites that were commenting on the campaign. There was buzz on Daily Kos, MyDD and Swing State Project, and some local blogs had sprung up to discuss the race. A pivotal site was "Grow Ohio," launched in June by U.S. Rep. Sherrod Brown of Ohio's 13th District. In 2004 that site's chief blogger, Tim Tagaris, had worked for a Daily Kos-endorsed candidate named Jeff Seemann in Ohio's 16th district, who had lost the race but earned more than $100,000 from online donations. Tagaris, also a blogger at Swing State Project and Daily Kos, had learned how to direct the eyes of media and bloggers to a campaign.

On July 13, the Hackett campaign sent a press release to bloggers and reporters called "Choose Your Seat Wisely," which dramatized what Hackett and Schmidt were doing on Oct. 24, 2004. While Schmidt appeared at a Republican fund-raiser and a football game, Hackett was in a chopper being transported from Ramadi to Fallujah. Tagaris posted a version of the release on Grow Ohio titled "What a Difference a Day Makes." The campaign's visibility was dramatically increased, and donations through Hackett's Web site and ActBlue spiked.

Six days later the campaign experienced another surge. A large number of liberal blogs had dubbed July 19 "Blogosphere Day." A year earlier, bloggers at Daily Kos had "adopted" Ginny Schrader, a nominally funded candidate in Pennsylvania's 8th district, and given her $25,000 in one day. As blogs were commemorating the day by coordinating donations to Hackett, Democracy For America sent out an e-mail to its list asking members to support him. Thanks to this combination, the Hackett campaign raised more than $80,000 in 24 hours - the best-ever day of online donations for a non-presidential campaign.

With the candidate's name and biography now known nationally across the blogs, the campaign was able to attract hundreds of volunteers. Bob Brigham, Tagaris's co-blogger on Swing State Project, got plugged into the campaign and started using the blog as a rapid response tool. Brigham's first test came on July 28, when a USA Today story on the race quoted Hackett saying, "I've said I don't like that son of a bitch that lives in the White House. But I'd put my life on the line for him." The next day, the NRCC announced two ad buys in the 2nd district totaling $525,000. Committee spokesman Carl Forti said it had reacted to Hackett's comments and "decided to bury him."

Even after the DCCC leapt into the race with its own ad buy, the blogs got mileage off Hackett and Forti's comments. The USA Today quote was spun as more straight talk from Hackett, and Forti's comment was spun as a faux pas. Donations spiked again.

On Aug. 1, the campaign told bloggers that it needed $30,000 to fund GOTV. They raised $50,000. On Election Night, Tagaris and Brigham had Internet access at campaign headquarters, where they posted updates and rumors. For around 30 minutes, when it looked like the race might come down to a few hundred votes in late-returning Clermont County, MyDD and Swing State Project asked readers to dig up information on Ohio election law.

In the end, both campaigns had executed their strategies. Woodruff had targeted 49,000 Democratic and independent households with 67,000 voters, and they turned out 55,091 of them. Of the seven counties in the district, all of which backed Bush in 2004, Hackett won four. But Braun's Clermont Plus plan paid off. Schmidt carried her home county by 4,881 votes - with a district-wide victory margin of 3,979 that made the difference.

Republicans and Democrats agree on one thing about the Ohio race: It won't happen again.

"Hackett was the beneficiary of being the only game in town, so the blogs had a greater impact than they normally do," said Forti. "And you saw that in the aftermath, the fallout between the DCCC and the blogs about targeting, who to target, and how early to get involved."

"We nationalized this special election, but the key in 2006 will be localization," Brigham said. "Campaigns that work with local bloggers will have real-time capability that will prove invaluable when things break. Candidates need to stop calling me and asking for a million dollars, and start calling their local bloggers and asking for 15 minutes to talk about the race."

Some general lessons can be gleaned.

Know the landscape.

For all the millions of blogs, a campaign only needs to reach some of them to start winning readers over. Along with whatever blogs exist in the campaign's district, Democrats should reach out to MyDD, Daily Kos and Eschaton; Republicans should look at Red State, Powerline and Polipundit. The generally high-earning, politically active readers of these blogs will check the sites in any given week.

Democratic and Republican blog readers have common traits that draw them online. Few trust the mainstream media, instead believing they can get real news in the blogs. Both are critical of their party's moderate wings and leadership, and can be persuaded to dish out if they find a candidate who fights what they believe.

Create a narrative.

Create a community, but do not try to control it.

The Hackett campaign used Ohio bloggers to stoke enough interest in the campaign to take it national. After mid-July, tens of thousands of blog readers were following the Hackett campaign, debating strategy online, asking how to help, and sending donations. In the last week, the netroots could be stoked by any buzz a blogger posted about the campaign.

Make donors feel appreciated.

Every successful use of the netroots has involved some kind of encouragement for donors. The Dean campaign had a visual tool, a cartoon of a baseball player whose bat would fill up with pixels as more people donated to the campaign. Donations sometimes reached a frenzy as Blog For America commentators punched their credit cards and refreshed the image, watching more and more of the bat turn red. The Hackett campaign used a more conventional encouragement; when they reached a goal or had a good round of financing, they told bloggers who breathlessly reported the news to readers.

Go everywhere.

While the Dean and Hackett campaigns didn't need online advertising to build an online network, campaigns with less hype can cheaply purchase ads on leading blogs. For a few thousand dollars, a campaign can post a prominent rectangular ad on a number of blogs for a week, a month, or three months. Ben Chandler, a Kentucky Democrat who won an open Republican U.S. House seat in a 2004 special election, spent $2,000 on blog ads that spurred more than $80,000 in online donations. It will always be easier to draw attention to a presidential campaign or special election, but any campaign can use a clever hook to reach into the growing netroots.

Conclusion:

Whichever party's candidates manage to get the biggest benefit from blogs, the one certainty is that they will be there to be used. Political activists are not going offline. The number of people that can be activated for donations, spin, or volunteer work is only going to increase, and the beneficiaries will be campaigns that can guide them through the doors.