Celebrities step up to try to swing votes

Bruce Springsteen will belt it out for Barack Obama on the Parkway today. Jon Bon Jovi is scheduled to appear for the Democratic presidential candidate at a $10,000-a-head fund-raising dinner in Mount Airy next week.

Springsteen's rally highlights the Monday voter-registration deadline in Pennsylvania. The Boss' Oct. 16 show at the Hammerstein Ballroom in New York City is a fund-raiser, with tickets going for as much as $10,000.

Jersey rockers aren't the only marquee musicmakers lining up to support presidential candidates. Everyone from the Puerto Rican reggaeton star Daddy Yankee, who's for John McCain, to the bluegrass legend Ralph Stanley, who vouches for Obama in radio ads running in Virginia, has spoken out.

The rapper Jay-Z will rhyme for Obama in Detroit today. The country singers John Rich and Gretchen Wilson have stumped for McCain, with Rich's "Raisin' McCain" praising the Arizona Republican senator as "a real man with an American plan."

Nonmusical celebrities haven't shied away, either. McCain has Clint Eastwood, Sylvester Stallone, and Heidi Montag of MTV's The Hills in his corner. Obama's longer list of celeb supporters includes Spike Lee, Scarlett Johansson, and the mother of all endorsers, Oprah Winfrey.

Celebrity endorsements are bound to translate into votes, right?

Not exactly.

They "don't have a huge impact on people's flat-out voting intention when you ask them who are they going to vote for," said Carroll Doherty of the Washington-based Pew Center for the People and the Press.

In a September 2007 poll timed to measure the likely impact of Winfrey's endorsement of Obama, the Pew Center found that 69 percent said the power of O would have "no impact" on how they voted.

Fifteen percent said it would make them more likely to vote for the Illinois senator, but the same proportion said it would make it less likely. Winfrey's influence was about the same as "your local newspaper" and better than Angelina Jolie's (6 percent more likely, 18 percent less) and Bill O'Reilly's.

"We asked a cross-section of figures, and you don't see a positive registration for any of them," says Doherty, the Pew Center's associate director, "conservative or liberal."

That doesn't mean big names aren't useful to campaigns and get-out-the-vote drives.

"That's a big part of what we do," says Valeisha Butterfield of the nonpartisan Hip-Hop Summit Action Network (HSAN), which has worked to swell voter rolls with inner-city events such as the one held at the Liacouras Center in April featuring rappers T.I. and HSAN cofounder Russell Simmons.

"But celebrity without substance doesn't work. You have to have celebrity coupled with true voter-registration efforts."

In 2004, HSAN was one of a number of organizations, along with groups such as Rock the Vote and MoveOn.org, that employed celebrities and "made a strong, concerted effort motivating young people to vote," says Ken Stroupe, chief of staff at the University of Virginia Center for Politics.

The result, says Stroupe, was the first spike in the number of 18-to-29-year-olds voting in presidential elections since 1992, and only the second such increase since 18-year-olds gained the right to vote in 1972.

Stroupe adds that national voter registration trends and participation in the primaries indicate that youth participation will go up again in 2008.

One reason is a push by the Obama campaign "that appears to be unprecedented," says Stroupe. Another is the growth of Internet social networks such as MySpace and Facebook. "It's so important to create that link with online marketing," says HSAN's Butterfield.

Music written for a political purpose can now spread at mouse-click speed. "I always had strong feelings that music had never been used right in political campaigns before," says Fred Goldring, the Wynnewood-raised Los Angeles music lawyer who prodded will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas to write "Yes We Can," a song based on an Obama speech and viewed about 25 million times on YouTube since it was posted in February.

"Musicians have a natural instinct to stand up and show their colors," says Dave Marsh, Springsteen biographer and host of the political talk show Live From the Land of Hope and Dreams, which airs Sundays at 2 p.m. on Sirius satellite radio.

Goldring cites jingles and slogans such as "I Like Ike" in the 1950s and, more recently, Fleetwood Mac's "Don't Stop," a Bill Clinton campaign-rally song in 1992. "I thought," says Goldring, "that if there could be an original, anthemic song that would support an underlying message, like a song does on a film soundtrack, that it could actually change minds."

That description could also fit "Raisin' McCain," which has had more than 100,000 YouTube hits since August.

What this year has lacked, however, is a massive undertaking like 2004's Vote for Change tour, in which Springsteen was joined by such acts as the Dixie Chicks, Kenny "Babyface" Edmonds and Pearl Jam in an effort to unseat President George W. Bush.

The reason there's no Vote for Change this year "is simple," says Marsh. "It didn't work." It failed, he says, because Sen. John Kerry was "a lousy candidate" and because "Vote for Change was vague. It was, 'We're going to help Kerry win.' Well, how, exactly?"

If appearances with big-name stars aren't likely to change voters' minds a month from Election Day - "Bruce has already alienated his Republican fans," says Marsh - they can raise awareness of a candidate.

A Pew poll in December 2007 showed that Winfrey "really did boost Obama's visibility," Doherty says. After Winfrey campaigned with Obama, respondent familiarity went from 10 percent to 26 percent, while Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's dropped from 61 percent to 46 percent.

"That was a striking example of a popular figure being able to move the needle nationally," Doherty says. "In a world of niches, [Winfrey] crosses a lot of them. She may be the exception that proves the rule."