While they continue to lean heavily on time-tested strategies to sway voters, candidates for office in Easthampton and Northampton have also expanded their campaign toolboxes to include interactive Web sites, Facebook pages and email newsletters.

Unlike federal and state elections in which having an Internet presence has been crucial for some time, it's only now starting to make a difference in local races where traditional forms of politicking - meet-and-greets, coffee hours, lawn signs, phone banks, mass mailings and literature drops, to name a few - still seem to be the preferred way to reach people.

Easthampton mayoral candidate James P. Kwiecinski said he has made knocking on doors around the city and face-to-face contact the cornerstone of his campaign.

"People want to be connected with the city and its mayor," Kwiecinski said. "People need to feel heard."

Having an online presence, however, gives candidates an inexpensive tool to increase visibility among voting blocks of people who are looking to these new mediums for information.

Campaign Web sites top the list of technology must-haves, as evidenced by heavily contested races in both cities.

In Northampton's mayoral race, both Mayor Clare Higgins and challenger Michael R. Bardsley have detailed campaign Web sites that contain information about their backgrounds and experience, as does nearly every candidate in the contested races for City Council.

Bardsley's site, created by a campaign volunteer, is designed like a newspaper and has been updated frequently throughout this fall's campaign. It currently includes short video segments from residents endorsing him in his quest to unseat Higgins. It has posted other articles that reflect positively on his candidacy, many of them written like news stories.

Bardsley said there wasn't a conscious effort among campaign staffers to make the site look like a newspaper, but that the design matched the experience of Adam Cohen, the person who created the Web site. "I'm using the talents of the people volunteering and by the dynamics of that, we came up with the Web site," he said.

His site also includes a column where he lists upcoming campaign events, has a special section for people to donate and provides links to his biography and his stance on issues.

Higgins' site, meanwhile, includes a series of tabs that viewers can click to learn about who she is and the positions she stands for, contribute and look at photos. The site includes a link that lists some 600 people who are supporting her re-election bid and a countdown to election day.

Higgins' camp has also invested in a Web-based software program called Complete Campaigns, which helps campaigns track supporters, voters, fundraising and volunteers.

Easthampton candidates

In Easthampton's 13 years as a city, the culture of local political campaigns is just starting to develop, but as in Northampton, proven campaign strategies reign supreme.

For the first time this year, the Internet and technology are playing a role in the city's four-way race for mayor, with each candidate - Kwiecinski, Albert J. DiCarlo, Margaret M. Prendergast and incumbent Michael A. Tautznik - creating campaign Web sites. The sites all contain information about the candidates' backgrounds and experience and a form for asking questions of the candidate, and most of the sites contain event photos and a schedule of public forums and other campaign happenings.

The sites for Tautznik and Kwiecinski explain their positions on the expansion of the Northampton landfill and their respective history with the topic.

Tautznik jabs at his opponent on his site, saying Kwiecinski has spread "deceit and innuendo" about Tautznik's position on the expansion. Kwiecinski jabs back on his own site, calling Tautznik's remarks about the landfill "misleading" and admonishing Tautznik for calling the Maloney well "poisoned" in a public forum this month.

Prendergast's and DiCarlo's sites are free of commentary about their opponents, although DiCarlo said his Web site didn't seem to be very effective.

"I hate to sound old, but sometimes what's tried and true works the best," he said.

Tautznik is the only Easthampton candidate with a campaign page on the social networking Web site Facebook. He said he uses it to organize events and communicate with volunteers.

"This really is my first foray," Tautznik said. "It reaches a group of folks that are present on Facebook."

His campaign manager, Ray Drewnowski, has posted regular updates to the page, noting news stories and other items.

Prendergast has a personal Facebook page where she and her friends have posted photos of various events, but she has largely not used the site for political organizing.

In Northampton, Bardsley and Higgins have Facebook pages that receive some hits, but both candidates downplay its importance in the campaign. Those sites primarily list upcoming events related to the campaign.

Community access television in both cities and the presence of several neighborhood blogs have also played roles in bringing debates and forums to residents during this fall's campaign season.