Transcript Staff Writer

Cleveland County's Republicans have gone high tech.

And they did it for low tech reasons.

For the first time in their history, the Cleveland County Republican Party has its own Internet Web site, county chairman Roger Warren said Thursday.

The site -- www.okgopcc.com -- went live on May 14.

"Our main reason to do it was simple," Warren said. "We needed to get Republican voters involved in the county party."

By doing that, he said, local party officials could "divorce the county party from national party politics."

And that, Warren said, would help better protect the local party from the voters' wrath when those voters disagree with national party actions.

"What happens is, politicians will do something on a national level that people disagree with," he said. "And then the voters take it out on us here at the county level, but our guys didn't do it."

Framed in red, white and blue, the Web site features eight sections, including a message from Warren, an enrollment form for volunteers, three separate calendars and links for news, trivia and other political sites.

"This is going to be our main form of communication," Warren said. "It's far cheaper than doing lots of mailings."

The site also offers links to state Republican headquarters.

"Since this is Cleveland County's first site, we wanted to make sure it was connected to the other GOP sites out there," he said.

To build the site, Warren turned to volunteers -- starting with his wife, Cleona.

After he and Cleona developed the idea, they approached the county party's executive committee for approval.

"When Roger was elected county chair, the county party was broke," Cleona Warren said. "And since we didn't have enough money to mail out a newsletter, we though of the Web site."

Once the Warrens received the committee's OK, the pair asked Moore resident Kevin Drury to create the site's design, structure and pages. Drury, who also works as a Web developer for the Oklahoma Department of Transportation, said he was happy to help.

"Roger, Cleona, and my family all go to the same church," Drury said. "And when Roger got elected as county chair, he approached me and asked me do the site. I'm a lifelong Republican, and I support them 100 percent, so I told them I would help."

It took the group about a month to wrap up the design.

"We began the process in April," Cleona Warren said. "We started a little bit at a time, then went through the approval process with the executive committee. On April 24, we got our domain name registered and since then, we've just really been building it."

For Drury the site is "kind of a work in progress."

"People are very positive," he said. "Folks will look at it and say, 'I'd like to see this.' We'll take input from anybody."

And while the site's traffic is slowly beginning to increase, Drury said an electronic fundraising component is already in the works.

"We have the beginnings of that out there now," he said. "Eventually we will set it up where folks can do donations through the Internet -- it just depends on the demand."

Both Warrens said with the volunteer labor and a small, $10 per month hosting fee, the new Web site offers Republicans a simple, cheap way to communicate. "It's the most cost-effective way we could think of," Warren said.

And it comes just as county Republicans are working to secure a third seat on the Cleveland County Board of Commissioners.

"We're trying to make people realize you can control local government if you get involved and go vote," Cleona Warren said. "And we want them to do something about it. School boards, city officials, county elected officials, that's what affects your immediate family."

The Cleveland County Web site is one of only a handful statewide, they said. At present, the state's main Republican site has links to GOP sites in Tulsa, Rogers, Oklahoma and Payne Counties.

"If we keep posting new info, and as long as we can keep making it change and update, I think people are going to want to go to it for information," Cleona Warren said. "It's the younger crowd that likes to surf the Internet."

M. Scott Carter 366-3545 scarter@normantranscript.com