EDMONTON - Type in "Ed Stelmach" on YouTube and up pops a Mexican bandit mocking the premier's promise to deliver a blueprint for Alberta's overheated economy.
"Plan?" sneers the thug, dressed in sombrero and bandolier in a sendup of the movie "Treasure of the Sierra Madre."
"We don't need no stinking plan."
Welcome to the Alberta election campaign on the Internet - the alternate universe where NDP leader Brian Mason sings with Trooper, where the sun transforms Alberta Liberal Leader Kevin Taft's scalp into an angelic nimbus of light, and where Stelmach autographs body parts, gets compared to Kermit the Frog and is defaced with satanic horns and a tail.
Social networking sites, blogsites, party websites and shared video sites have become key weapons in the campaign, now entering its second week.
Candidates are also signing onto cyberspace, including Laura Shutiak, a Liberal fighting to unseat Tory Heather Forsyth in the riding of Calgary-Fish Creek. She has posted a two-minute video on YouTube spotlighting her and her two young daughters against a plain white backdrop, listing the Top 10 reasons to vote for her.
"I think it gives people a sense of who I am. If it translates into a vote, great," she said. "There are so many undecided voters right now that they're looking for a sense of who a person is, and they're looking to go a step further to find out more."
Voters go to the polls March 3 to decide whether to give Stelmach's Progressive Conservatives an 11th consecutive mandate or change government for the first time since 1971.
The Internet has become a place where government opponents express their displeasure, sometimes in crude and blue terms.
There are YouTube TV ads denouncing Stelmach and YouTube party ads praising him. One video calls for the return of his prececessor Ralph Klein and juxtaposes Stelmach with Kermit the Frog.
On Facebook he sports the devil's horns and tail in the traditional ad hoc magic-marker style typically reserved for faces of real-estate agents on bus stop benches.
Those who wish to contribute can join in on 25 news groups, including the Ed Stelmach Fan Club (with a picture of the premier signing a teen's forearm), Albertans Against Ed Stelmach, Students Against Stelmach, Fire Ed Stelmach, Ed Stelmach is Trying to Destroy Alberta, Premier Ed Stelmach: Bad for Alberta, and, for a change of pace, the Alberta Climate Change Plan Sucks.
But if in politics to be mocked is to matter, then Alberta Liberal Leader Kevin Taft and the NDP's Brian Mason are comparative cyber-ciphers.
Taft has just four Facebook news groups under his name, including one that lauds the efforts of a cross-country skiers Kevin Gilmore and Bill Taft. Mason doesn't exist at all.
With the New Democrats and the Liberals both struggling for cash against a reported $4 -million Tory war chest, web video has become the most cost-effective way to get their message across.
On the Liberal party website, there is video of Taft playing hockey on the neighbourhood ice rink, striding up the legislature steps -- one tiny man in a greatcoat dwarfed by sandstone pillars -- or sitting at home, the rising sun beaming through the glass behind his head.
Mason lives on YouTube in a stunt spot he did for a local TV station. Dressed in black T-shirt and suit jacket, he is seen joining the rock group Trooper on stage, grabbing the microphone and punishing the swaying, screaming Gen-Xers with a violently off-key rendition of "Raise a Little Hell."
Blogger Dave Cournoyer is also enjoying a moment on the big stage. His three-year political blog daveberta.blogspot.com rocketed into the mainstream media just prior to the election call when Stelmach's lawyer threatened legal action to recover the domain name edstelmach.ca.
Daily hits on Cournoyer's site rose from 500 a day to a thousand.
The site analyzes the parties and the platforms and provides cheeky links to such other sites as edspedia.ca, which created the Stelmach-bandit video.
"The Internet is playing more of a central role in these campaigns because it's where a lot more Albertans are looking for a first source of information," said Cournoyer, who will also make his TV debut this campaign as a political analyst. "I don't think it's a distrust of the mainstream media. People are just accessing information in different ways."
Political scientist David Taras says the Internet and blogs have played a big role in U.S. elections and in the recent federal Liberal leadership campaign, but they haven't yet in Alberta.
"The basic rule so far is that things that go on in cyberspace don't have an impact unless they're picked up and legitimized by the mainstream media," said Taras, who teaches at the University of Calgary and has researched the cyber-politics.
For now, he said, the blogs and sites are preaching to the converted and are not a shopping centre for the undecided. "(Users) are refiltering information according to decisions they've already made or allegiances they've already formed."
The Conservatives had 60 of the 83 seats in the legislature at dissolution. The Alberta Liberals had 16, the New Democrats had four, there was one Wildrose-Alliance member and one Independent and there was one vacant seat.
