Thirty days ago The Drum Major Institute for Public Policy (DMI) released an analysis of New York State legislators' middle-class voting records titled "Fighting For New York's Middle Class: 2001 -- 2005 NY State Legislative Scorecard" and promoted it with a groundbreaking Google AdWords campaign. Accolades for the ingenuity of the AdWords campaign have been widespread. State Sen. Liz Kruger recognized DMI's innovative Internet effort as an "evolution (in) digital information and politics." In the media, the Gotham Gazette called the AdWords campaign both "pioneering" and "particularly innovative," MyDD.com labeled the campaign as a "brilliant," "incredibly valuable resource" for voters, while Business Week magazine cited the DMI campaign's breadth and effectiveness as an example of "why savvy big-name marketers are now tying search ads into more traditional campaigns."
DMI's Google AdWords campaign proves that New Yorkers are interested in learning more about their legislators in Albany. In fact, New Yorkers Googled a member of their state legislature 76,951 times between March 15 and April 13 and each time they were confronted with that legislator's grade on DMI's scorecard and a link to the scorecard itself. DMI has compiled a detailed analysis of its Google AdWords campaign, which is now available online at http://www.drummajorinstitute.org/pdfs/DMI%20AdWord%20Campaign%20Analysis.pdf.
According to DMI Executive Director Andrea Batista Schlesinger: "DMI has been overwhelmed with the responses from our Google AdWords initiative. We have received countless emails and phone calls applauding our effort to make New York legislators' voting records on middle-class legislation more transparent and easy to access and understand." In response to the significant praise its Google AdWords campaign received, DMI will be extending the campaign through the remainder of 2006.
Effectively promoting DMI's scorecard brings transparency to how legislators in Albany vote on issues of importance to their current and aspiring middle-class constituents. Within DMI's scorecard, individual legislators, the full Senate and Assembly and both major political parties are graded on their support for middle-class legislation from 2001 through 2005. The bills in examined fall into seven legislative categories: consumer protection; economy/taxes; good government; health care and health protection; housing; public education; and wage and workplace protections.
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