Waterbury Candidates Online

This campaign season the three current major candidates for Mayor of Waterbury have campaign web pages. This is apparently the first time that has happened, and the Waterbury Republican-American asked me to review all three web pages.

Ghengis Conn of CTLP fame and I were both asked by Steve Gambini of the Republican-American to give our thoughts on the campaign web pages of these candidates. Our thoughts were published in the print version of the paper on Monday, July9th. Unfortunately, to access the article online you have to pay. The irony!

I am reprinting below my full comments to Mr. Gambini with regards to those sites. Please note that I did not give grooming tips, like the fact that Michael Jarjura should abandon his 'George Costanza' approach to fashion. If you are interested in Waterbury Politics, I encourage you to check these sites out.

Dennis Odle -
Odle's site has the most bells and whistles. He has updated and relevant information, provides an email alert service which gives you incentive to return to the site, and a place to contribute money and sign up to volunteer for him. Those are the critical things.

He is also attempting to do a blog on his site, which I think is a mistake... it's a nice attempt to be interactive, but he is trying to put too much on his site. I almost half expect to see a Dennis Odle video game for kids to play, or a digital coloring book of the monuments of Waterbury.

Tony D'Amelio-
I probably like the look of this site the most. It's not overly-busy, and the graphics are nice. His news section is also the best of the three candidates, and shows his record off. He has that critical internet contribution ability. He might want to consider adding the sign up capacity for email alerts, which are important and bring traffic back to you.

D'Amelio also showcases his family front and center on the first page, which I think is a great touch.

Michael Jarjura-
The worst by far, is the Jarjura site. Working your way through it is painful. It hasn't been updated since his write-in victory two years ago despite the fact that the new campaign season has begun. It has juvenile graphics, almost no relevant information (even if it were still 2005) and provides visitors with no ability to donate to the campaign over the Internet.

I have seen websites for church bingo nights that are more lively, informative, and exciting.

In summation, both Odle and D'Amelio have fairly decent sites. Odle could probably pare his down a bit, and D'Amelio could add some more things. But the pages are in their infancy and will hopefully develop with the campaign.

The Jarjura site is not in its infancy... it is postmortem from 2005, and he needs to fix that yesterday.