Hey, Mom! I’m in the Washington Post! Some Candidates Turn To Blogs to Place Ads (washingtonpost.com). (Hat tip: bad elvin.)

Back in January, during the waning weeks of his special election campaign for the House, the Kentucky Democrat spent $2,000 on ads on 11 blogs.

It was, at the time, a novel idea. Howard Dean, and later most of his Democratic presidential rivals, had developed campaign blogs, or Web logs — essentially, online journals of their comings and goings. But few, if any, candidates had tried advertising on other people’s blogs.

Chandler’s campaign picked 11 sites that focused on politics, each of which featured a running commentary on the news of the day. The sites, conventional wisdom said, amounted to little more than obscure soapboxes for amateur pundits — hardly a good place for candidates to spend scarce campaign dollars. Chandler’s campaign manager, Mark Nickolas, had proposed the idea. But he was so unsure it would work, he later said, that he planned to personally reimburse the campaign if it was a bust.

It was not. The candidate recouped his money in online donations the first day of the campaign — and went on to raise more than $80,000 over the next two weeks. The money came, mostly in small donations — about 1,700 in all. Few of them, Nickolas said, came from within the Bluegrass State. Chandler quickly plowed the windfall back into more traditional advertising — television, radio and newspaper spots — and finished the race on top and with money left in the bank.

Since then, other candidates have come calling, Nickolas said, pumping him for advice on how they might replicate Chandler’s success. More than two dozen candidates, meanwhile, have placed orders for similar ads with Henry Copeland, a North Carolina entrepreneur who handled Chandler’s ads.

There are hundreds, if not thousands, of such blogs, each offering its own, usually partisan, take on the nation’s politics. But a handful have attracted somewhat sizable followings. On the left, there is, for example, DailyKos.com, TalkingPointsMemo.com and Atrios.blogspot.com. On the right, there are, among others, InstaPundit.com, RightWingNews.com and LittleGreenFootballs.com/weblog/. Experts said the sites are ripe for political advertising because they reach thousands of people who are clearly interested in politics, and whose political leanings can be readily surmised. “This is the campfire that the partisans are gathered around,” Copeland said.