If the 2007 election has a guy behind the guy, it is Mr. Krompak. Besides Mr. Cichy and Ms. Webb, he works in varying capacities for Toledo Councilman Mike Craig and the Toledo Board of Education candidacies of Richard Brown and Lisa Sobecki. Mr. Cichy and Ms. Webb are both clients of Ben Krompak, a 25-year old political consultant whose strategy framed them as advocates for their districts.

In addition to producing television advertisements, designing campaign literature, and developing Web sites, the months-old Krompak Communications fills a niche commonly reserved for a political party. The firm targets voters, keeps walking lists (addresses to visit), and makes robo-calls (automated phone messages seeking support).

A prolonged split between factions of the Lucas County Democratic Party helped pave the way for Mr. Krompak's business opportunity. As the party's endorsed candidate in District 6, Ms. Webb said the Lucas County Democrats are helping her with money and manpower "but in terms of the technological capabilities, they simply don't have it."

"I think he's providing a service that is desperately needed because we have an ineffectual party right now," said Toledo Councilman Joe McNamara. Party Chairman John Irish said the county Democrats do rely on technology, noting the importance of e-mail in communicating with volunteers. He said that it is too early in the campaign for steps such as robo-calls.

[T]he current tug of war is also about whether the existing party infrastructure can get candidates elected. Mr. Krompak, still a year and a half away from a University of Toledo bachelor's degree, thinks he can help. He did for Mr. McNamara.

Mr. Krompak helped manage Mr. McNamara's bid last year for an at-large council seat. The largely self-financed McNamara campaign operated with almost none of the traditional machinery. Mr. Irish criticized the candidate as "unethical" for distributing a sample ballot that made Mr. McNamara appear to be the endorsed candidate, which he was not.

The win taught Mr. Krompak a lesson. "Insider support is overrated," he said. "A lot of times, you'll talk to candidates and you'll talk to folks who are in the political establishment locally and their focus tends a lot to be on endorsements from elected officials, from special interest groups, from labor unions, from PACs."

"If you're only focused on sewing up insider support," he continued, "then you're not focusing on direct voter contact, which is ultimately what is going to win the election."

The most valuable resources a candidate has are time and money, and the role of a consultant is to use both efficiently, Mr. Krompak said. Look at the packed District 2 race. There are nine potential candidates, including previous Democratic council candidates Karen Shanahan, Bob Vasquez, and Mr. Cichy.

By Mr. Krompak's analysis, the district has 30,510 registered voters. Since fewer people vote in off-year elections, Mr. Krompak pared the number of households Mr. Cichy needs to visit to 3,877, 52 percent of which are Democratic. Mr. Cichy will ask directly for the support of each person who talks to him. He will then rate the responses as "definitely supportive," "probably supportive," "undecided," and "not supportive," direct feedback in an arena where gratification is usually delayed until Election Day.

"In this primary, targeting is the most important thing you can do," Mr. Cichy said. "You can only hit so many voters. You have to be realistic."

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... sometimes called narrowcasting [microtargeting] is a method used by United States Republican and Democratic political parties and candidates to track individual voters and identify potential supporters. They then use various means of communication -- direct mail, phone calls, home visits, television, radio, web advertising, email, text messaging, etc -- to communicate with voters, crafting messages to build support for fundraising, campaign events, volunteering, and eventually to turn them out to the polls on election day. Microtargeting's tactics rely on transmitting a tailored message to a subgroup of the electorate on the basis of unique information about that subgroup.

Microtargeting is a modification of a practice used by commercial direct marketers. It would not be possible on a large scale without the development of large and sophisticated database that contain data about as many voters as possible. The database essentially tracks voter habits in the same ways that companies like Visa track consumer spending habits.

The databases contain specific information about a particular voter (party affiliation, frequency of voting, contributions, volunteerism, etc.) with other activities and habits (for instance if she is a golfer or watches "Will and Grace"). Such personal information is a "product" sold to interested companies. This data is particularly illuminating when portrayed through a GIS (Geographic Information System), where trends based on location can be mapped alongside dozens or hundreds of other variables. This geographic depiction also makes it ideal for volunteers to visit potential voters (armed with lists in hand, laid out in the shortest route - much like how FedEx and UPS pre-determine delivery routes).

These data are then mined to identify issues important to each voter and whether that voter is more likely to identify with one party or another. Political information is obviously important here, but consumer preferences can play a role as well. For example, Republicans prefer bourbon, while Democrats drink gin. Individual voters are then put into groups on the basis of sophisticated computer modeling. Such groups have names like "Downscale Union Independents", "Tax and Terrorism Moderates" and "Older Suburban Newshounds."

Once a multitude of voting groups is established according to these criteria and their minute political differences, then the tailored messages can be sent via the appropriate means. While political parties and candidates used to prepare one standard television ad for general broadcast nationwide, it is now not at all uncommon to have several dozen variations on the one message, each with a unique and tailored message for that small demographic sliver of the voting public. This goes the same for radio advertisement, direct mail, email, as well as stump speeches and fundraising events.

I think the discussion concerning the use of technology is an important one. In talking with candidates and in blogging local politics there is still a mindset here that the traditional campaign methods are the only ones worth doing by some that has placed this area behind in utilizing the internet as fully as other parts of Ohio and the Nation have done.

The traditional ways of door to door are not dead, especially given the numbers of people in Toledo that do not have computers at home or access to the internet, but there are ways to make better use of technology that could be embraced by many local candidates.

We are making steps though, when I first started covering local elections very few candidates even had a basic web presence and while there are still some out there that have not discovered the value of the net, more and more are at least doing the basics.