Flavel Web site offers live chats with candidate
Democratic sheriff candidate James Flavel hasn’t spent anything yet on his campaign except the $1,050 filing fee and hasn’t collected any donations, campaign spending records show.
But while he has so far done without signs, mailers or commercials, Flavel said he has a novel way of using the Internet to connect with voters – live sessions in which he answers questions from potential supporters who can see him on a Web camera.
“I’m using a very unique strategy and it’s gaining votes,” Flavel said recently. “It seems to be working.”
Most evenings at 8 p.m., Flavel sits in front of a video camera connected to a computer, and has a “real-time video chat” with people who sign in to the campaign Web site, www.jamesflavelforsheriff.com, and send him questions or comments. He gets only a few takers on any given night but believes the number of participants will grow as word gets out.
He said he developed some of the Web site features for Matchfinders for Singles, an online dating service he operates with his wife. “I readapted it to make it fit for the campaign.”
Flavel was a relative unknown when he entered the sheriff’s race on the last day candidates could file for office. He’s a former Idaho State Police officer who ran for Bonner County commissioner in 1978 but lost in the Democratic primary. This is his first attempt at political office since then.
In a recent appearance on the Mark Fuhrman radio show, Flavel said he ran as a Republican in 1978. Asked about the discrepancy, he said he was trying “a ‘Saturday Night Live’ play on those guys.”
Last month he received almost 29,000 votes running unopposed in the Democratic primary, but 1,300 voters wrote in someone else’s name and another 9,000 voters didn’t mark a choice in that race. That was the highest number of write-ins and the highest number of blank or “undervotes” of any countywide race.
“I don’t really know how to interpret that, other than I jumped in at the last moment,” he said.
– From staff reports