Assemblyman Chuck DeVore launched his longshot bid to unseat U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer back in November. Back then he made a lot of noise about how he planned to emulate Barack Obama’s sophisticated cyber path to the White House.

So how’s that going so far?

Not bad.

Already he’s won in the politics division for the first Shorty Awards, which recognizes the best producers of short content (140 characters or less on Twitter). DeVore’s award-winning Tweets come courtesy of Justin Hart, who DeVore hired after a few other Web guys turned him down. Hart, DeVore’s director of new media with the campaign, is based in Virginia and worked for Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign.

DeVore’s a serious early adopter of new technology. He’s wired into social networking sites like Facebook and is usually plugged into his Crackberry.

“I’m not a millionaire or a celebrity,” DeVore notes, so it’s hard to get the message out. “But I’m a good writer and speaker … I knew that to have a chance to win a statewide effort I would have to think outside the box and make more use of the Internet.”

Obama’s ascension inspires him because he says the Illinois lawmaker served about the same amount of time in the state senate as DeVore has in state government before Obama won his senate bid. Of course, a dazzling keynote address at the Democratic National Convention kind of helped launch him. That speech, of course, catapulted Obama’s memoir, “Dreams From My Father,” and the book spelling out his political vision, “Audacity of Hope” to best-seller status.

Still, DeVore recognizes that the true power of social networking is its tendency to exponentially grow an audience. It’s sort of like that Faberge shampoo commercial. “And they told two friends, and they told two friends, and so on and so on…”(Hey, I know it’s an ancient pop-culture reference but I still remember it! It worked.).

Case in point: DeVore and Hart conceived a Twitter fundraising campaign. The goal? To net 100 new donors in 24 hours. They did that and more. Eventually 169 donated through a program that allowed them to give through Twitter. That’s why they won the award, which will be given out in a Feb. 11 ceremony in New York. DeVore may go to network some more. Hart will Tweet from the train ride to New York.

And think about how inexpensive all this is. Instead of spending a fortune on direct mail (something, actually, that John McCain’s campaign foolishly did in the general election), DeVore is getting the same message out to thousands of voters for basically nothing and so far he’s received 1,000 financial contributions. And they’re from conservatives all over the country who want to see Boxer gone.

“These are all small donations, and just like Barack Obama found out someone who gives a little can give again and again and again,” DeVore said. “And you’re not spending on stamps, labor, the fliers. And the word-of-mouth is more effective anyway.”

Like most web-savvy people, DeVore was multi-tasking as I interviewed him. He toggled between me and replying to a Wall Street Journal reporter through his Facebook group. You can expect a lot more from his net-guerilla campaign. In fact, he’s developing something along the lines of mybarackobama.com, one of the more successful weapons the president unleashed during the campaign because it encouraged supporters to not only network, but it helped them feel fully invested in the effort.

It’s difficult to say at this point whether it will work. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger could jump into the race and Godzilla everyone else out of the primary with the sheer force of his celebrity. On the other hand, Schwarzenegger has been wounded by the endless budget battles. And, I’ve concluded over the years, that politics is a crazy business. Not many gave Obama much of a chance. Remember, a lot of prognosticators left Obama for dead after he lost New Hampshire and Nevada (though he did win the battle of delegates there). But a year ago today he won the South Carolina primary and shortly after that and Super Duper Tuesday he went on his 11-victory-in-a-row dash through February.

Boxer would be smart not to take DeVore too lightly. It would be hard to blame her if she did as it appears the GOP has fallen way behind technologically. DeVore’s theory is that conservatives tend to shy away from netroots organizing as it leaves so much out of their control. Talk radio is way easier to manipulate.

“There’s more risk because things get more edgy. What happens if one of your (Facebook) supporters is controversial? What if it’s late at night and you’re responding to a blog and you make a faux pas?” DeVore said. “It’s more unscripted, it’s quick, it’s natural and people can see through it quickly… The Internet is a more immediate medium, but it’s also more dangerous. But here we are in California so I sure as heck should be a leading innovator.”

Bookmark to: