Belchertown gains nanosecond of political fame

Wednesday, January 3, 2001
By ROSS GRANT

BELCHERTOWN   —   Interested in taking a position in George W. Bush's presidential administration?

Or maybe you're looking to volunteer for Bush's transition team to help him step confidently into the top job?

Well, get your letter and resume together and fax it to Belchertown.

Belchertown?

Belchertown.

According to president-elect Bush and vice president-elect Dick Cheney's World Wide Web site   —   www.bushcheneytransition.com   —   people interested in serving in the administration or volunteering are instructed to fax their information to (413) 460-2495 or (413) 460-2609.

And the Web site says you can even send faxes or e-mails to "pass on advice regarding specific federal departments or agencies."

If you're wondering why Belchertown   —   a town of 13,000 which still doesn't have its own supermarket   —   is suddenly in the center of presidential politics, you're not the only one.

"Wow," said Richard H. Knight, chairman of Belchertown's Republican Town Committee.

"I'm flabbergasted. I don't know of anybody in town who would do that," he said.

That Belchertown would play any role in Republican politics is surprising since only 16 percent of its 8,225 registered voters are enrolled as Republicans. About 28 percent of the voters are Democrats, while the remaining 56 percent are unenrolled.

Nevertheless, two telephone numbers in Belchertown's newly created 460 exchange route presidential dispatches to a computer database in Washington, D.C., a Bush spokeswoman said.

But if you're imagining a row of fax machines or computers in some Belchertown basement, you're applying analog thinking to a digital world.

In actuality, the faxes spend only a nanosecond in Belchertown before being "ported" by computer to a giant digital server in Chicago, said a spokesman from j2 Global Communications, a Los Angeles company that offers the service.

"Chicago is the heart of the operation. From there it will go out to the customer's e-mail account," said Scott Turicchi, j2 Global's executive vice president for corporate development.

More than 4 million customers use j2 Global's computerized fax numbers. Most of them, like the president-elect, get random numbers. That's where Belchertown comes in. Like Montana or Utah, where there are many more telephone numbers than people, Belchertown's 460 exchange is rarely used. So j2 Global bought a block of the numbers for a good price and assigned them to customers, Turicchi said. And thus in a zip, the Belchertown faxes arrive on Capitol Hill.

Even with technology on their side, though, the bulk of people sending suggestions to the president-to-be is probably unwieldy. Bush's team still needs someone to separate the "legitimate concerns from the junk mail," said Walter E. Craven, owner of LAN Tamers, a computer service company in Palmer.

"The White House has no time to read its e-mail," he said.

"I can imagine how many e-mails they get. It's tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands a day, without a doubt. There's a lot of junk out there. But that's the nature of the electronic revolution," Craven said.