Clinton staffers banned from liberal New Hampshire blog

Less than a month before the first presidential primary in New Hampshire, a liberal blog in the Granite State has banned six usernames traced to an IP address belonging to Sen. Hillary Clinton's campaign, because those using the names failed to disclose that they are affiliated with the campaign.

The Blue Hampshire blog traced two usernames to the IP address, along with four usernames that had registered with the blog within minutes of one another that were used to recommend a pro-Clinton post noted
Dean Barker, managing editor of the blog, last week.

"Paid campaign staff are welcome in this community, but are asked to disclose their affiliation to a campaign, either through their signature line, a disclosure statement on a diary or even in the choosing of a user name," Barker wrote on the blog. "The fact that all the users mentioned above came from a Clinton campaign IP, but did not register with campaign email addresses and avoided making comments or diaries, instead only recommending pro-Clinton diaries strikes us as gaming the system."

The Clinton campaign did not respond to a Computerworld request for comment but told Blue Hampshire that the comments on the blog were not part of an orchestrated effort, but the product of "overeager staffers and volunteers."

"While initial acts like these are very small, when a community starts to sense there is no enforcement of the norms of the site, a slow slide into anarchy inevitably begins," Barker added. "Team Clinton is the subject of this post, but it is meant to be a warning shot across the bow of all campaigns. It is the fact that we do manage to have civilized discussions here among opponents that makes this line worth drawing."

One user on the blog, registered as Elwood, noted that there is a noticeable difference between "organized dirty campaign tricks and half-witted acts by volunteers and staffers." The Clinton staffers who commented on Blue Hampshire fall into the second category, Elwood claimed.

"If a campaign operative simply comes to a site like this and registers openly and makes his/her case openly she or he will be much more effective," Elwood wrote on the blog.

However, another user on the site, MBair, noted that there is a difference between one user promoting content that is supportive of a candidate and someone trying to "fake out other members of the community" by pretending they are someone they are not.

"That's exactly what's going on here," MBair wrote. "These users are not members of the community. If they want to start blogging and writing diaries, then sweet, the more the merrier. If they want to do it from a Clinton campaign machine then that's their business and anyone here would be extremely petty to fault them for it. But how do you even know that this isn't one person with a bunch of sock puppets? That's not cool as far as I'm concerned."

This is not the first time a candidate has grappled with the blogosphere. In February, John Edwards faced a firestorm of criticism over the religious comments made by two bloggers from his staff. The bloggers later left the campaign.