WASHINGTON — During the 2004 presidential campaign, the radical way for candidates to reach young voters in college dormitories was to appear on "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart." This time around, some candidates have gone straight to the dorm rooms.
Not just any room, but Room 325, a single on the third floor of a red-brick residence hall at Georgetown University here. Two long-shot presidential hopefuls have trekked there to meet James Kotecki, a 21-year-old international politics major who has become the candidates' unlikely guide to the YouTube demographic.
In January, right about the time that presidential hopefuls began experimenting with posting campaign videos on the Internet, Kotecki started critiquing their efforts through YouTube videos of his own. Talking to pencil-puppet versions of the candidates, the self-described "huge political geek" dispensed campaign advice from his dimly lighted room, where shelves stocked with Pringles and Special K served as the backdrop.
The campaigns paid attention. Kotecki became a kind of unpaid online video consultant, with candidates taking his tips and sending back video responses.
Rep. Ron Paul, a Texas Republican, and former Alaska Sen. Mike Gravel, a Democrat, even visited Kotecki's dorm room for serious, sit-down interviews that he posted on YouTube.
Kotecki's graduation last month meant that he left the dorm room behind, but not his influence. On Thursday Democratic candidate Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich of Ohio joined Kotecki for a YouTube video they shot in a Capitol Hill park. A Republican hopeful, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, recently did the same at a Washington fundraiser.
"I'm not going to say never in my wildest dreams would I have ever expected this, because I have a tendency to dream pretty big, but it's not really something I could have predicted," Kotecki said of his newfound notoriety. "YouTube is a total crapshoot."
And Kotecki got lucky.
Before he became the unofficial VJ for the 2008 presidential campaign, Kotecki was just another kid with a video camera.
He often broke up his studies at Georgetown by surfing the offerings on YouTube, the video-sharing site. When he bought a Web camera in January, he decided to join the craze.
"Everyone else is doing it," he thought. "It seems like they're having a good time."
Kotecki started recording his opinions, two or three minutes at a time, about how each presidential candidate was using the video site. He posts them on his blog, jameskotecki.com, and on YouTube.
