The Web on the Candidates

• Someone on the Hillary Clinton campaign is obviously leaking stories to Drudge, says Patrick Ruffini. His proof? A Drudge exclusive claiming that Clinton is on track to exceed her first-quarter earnings. Drudge makes it clear as day that this story is a World Exclusive, which does raise the question of who's passing on this information...
• Meanwhile, Election Geek is finding major discrepancies between the Drudge story and a Huffington Post story claiming that Clinton has maxed out her big donors and is struggling to keep up with small donations. "So which one is it?" Geek asks. His opinion: "Clinton had a massive donor database she didn’t even come close to tapping. The prevailing wisdom 'out there' was that everyone jumped ship to Obama. My own thought? She purposely didn’t tap that list knowing they were going to do well in Q1 and saved more big donations for Q2."

The Candidates on the Web

"I'm with Fred" Edition:

• The Fred Thompson campaign just got a whole lot more interesting: Shira Toeplitz of the Hotline reports that Thompson has been putting together a killer online team for his presidential campaign. Although earlier this week the Politico reported that Mike Turk, former e-campaign director for Bush Cheney '04 and TechPresident blogger, will "assist in getting the Thompson website off the ground," Toeplitz writes that he will serve as "chief architect" of the website and online operation. In addition, New Media Strategies will take on the campaign, and CEO Pete Snyder will do "Web 2.0 outreach and online intelligence." Todd Zeigler and the Bivings Group will do "design, strategy and build tools for the Web site," and Blaise Hazelwood, the head of iWebStrategies and former Political Director of the RNC in 200 and 2004, will be working on the website and blog. Check out Shira's post for more.
• Eyeon08 notices that Fred Thompson's placeholder site, I'm with Fred! (which is funded by "Friends of Fred Thompson"), is collecting some unorthodox information from supporters. In addition to asking for standard information like name, email address, home address, and phone number, the site also asks for your cell phone number, cell provider, and IM screen name. "They want to talk to me. The Thompson campaign is the first campaign to ask me for that information. They can send me targeted messages. That is very cool. And very, very important. This is the first glimpse of how they will use technology differently," says eye. While Thompson may not be the first campaign to ask for this information -- commenters on the post point out that the Santorum campaign in 2006 asked for this information and the RNC is asking for it too -- it looks like he's the first presidential candidate to do so.
• Thompson has raised $220k online in 18 hours, says Patrick Ruffini. He calls the news "a powerful shot across the bow," and it is -- Thompson is clearly filling a void for Republicans, and his online approach is generating lots of buzz.

Also:

• Tom Tancredo is this week's YouTube Spotlight participant, and his question is about his big issue, illegal immigration. He says he wants to move beyond the statistics and hear about the human costs. "I'd like to know from you: have you been impacted by illegal immigration, and it what way?" He seems to be assuming that everyone watching is "legal"...

In Case You Missed It...

A new video from the Edwards campaign features campaign aides showing us how (not) to bake a pie, in a humorous attempt to raise money.