By: Jill Young Miller

June 24, 2006, Atlanta Journal-Constitution

"Vote or die!"

A catchy, pulsating rap calling for a "new day, new look, new style" is as close as your computer keyboard. Angela Moore, a Democratic candidate for Georgia secretary of state, is cranking it up online, with a rap by a 13-year-old supporter.

For most voters, probably the most widely heard campaign tune is the energetic yet ethereal one on the "Sonny Did" television commercials for Gov. Sonny Perdue.

But "Vote 4 Miss Angela" is the buzz of politicos tuned into the Internet --- and shows how creative some candidates with lean advertising budgets can be. (www.angelasos06.com)

"It's a very nice song, and nobody else has a rap, OK?" said Moore, laughing. She's a medical staffing company owner running for her first statewide office. "I play it at rallies. I play it whenever I have an event."

If easy listening suits you better, check out Hank Johnson's campaign song. The former DeKalb County commissioner who's challenging Democratic U.S. Rep. Cynthia McKinney puts forth an R&B song saying he's "the solution for taking care of home." (www.hankforcongress.com)

Candidates, of course, have deployed songs for decades. "Get on the Raft With Taft" was sung nearly 100 years ago to push the rotund William Howard Taft into the Oval Office.

Now some campaign songs are downloadable, which "in some ways ... gets back to the roots of campaign music," said Mark Clague, an assistant professor of musicology at the University of Michigan. As long as a hundred years ago, traveling candidates used campaign songs with original lyrics to create excitement and name recognition among voters, he said. Now friends can share campaign ditties on their iPods.

Recent politicians have used hit songs in their campaigns with hopes that a song's popularity would rub off on them, Clague said. Think Bill Clinton and the baby boomer staple "Don't Stop (Thinking About Tomorrow)".

On a more folksy front, Georgians might remember former Republican Sen. Paul Coverdell's ads featuring a then-73-year-old South Georgia woman, Margie Goode Lopp, singing a homegrown campaign jingle from a swing in her yard.

"You can see why people use music, because music makes things memorable and it touches on emotion," said Tim Calkins, a national branding expert and marketing professor at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management. Calkins tuned in, online, to Georgia candidates' songs. "They're light on specifics," he said, "and heavier on emotional appeal."

Johnson's song, complete with a voice-over by the candidate, "is quite an elaborate song there," he said. But it doesn't get into platform issues. Which doesn't really matter, Calkins added. The song might get voters to remember the candidate's name, he said, and to come away with a feeling that "he's a good fella and he'll do a good job."

Perdue's song "is much more of a background," Calkins said. "What's nice about that is that ties together all of his campaign elements. ... It has almost a march/hymn feel to it." Calkins said it gives off "an almost heroic feel of Sonny off fighting the battle." (You can view his ads online at www.votesonny.com. And you can download a "Sonny Did" ring tone from www.procatalog.com/votesonny/default.asp?pt=doc&doc=download.)

The "Vote 4 Miss Angela" rap "is quite catchy," Calkins said. "That one, of course, is going to appeal to a certain demographic. A lot of energy, a lot of excitement there."

A 13-year-old rapper named Pootah, aka Keenan Mathews, who lives in Lithonia, was inspired to write and produce the song after he met candidate Moore at an event in Atlanta last year. He was 12. "She was running for secretary of state, and I said, 'OK, that's really big.' "

Before he wrote the rap, he talked with his parents and also went online to research voting. "I think it's really important for people to vote because their voices should be heard," he said.