John Edwards has become the first presidential candidate to -- unofficially -- tread into the Second Life waters.

(Former Virginia Governor Mark Warner actually got there first, but he dropped out of the race before there really was a race, so it's hard to count him as a candidate.)

A volunteer named Jerimee Richir (avatar name: Jose Rote) set up a virtual headquarters for the Edwards campaign on his own dime. According to Steve O'Hear over at ZDNet, Richir is unaffiliated with the Edwards campaign but he has their support for the project.

I stopped by and it was completely empty, like a lot of Second Life spots that don't have an actual event occurring. It's pretty spare, with a few kiosks scattered about that when touched help you join a John Edwards Second Life group. It would be nice if they could connect you to the web site and help you get started with a blog or connected to One Corps. Keeping everything within Second Life -- rather than pointing people to points outside the world -- doesn't make sense to me, but its a problem that I've seen all over SL.

Here's my avatar at the site:

You can also put on an Edwards t-shirt and "Ed-head" shoes, send John a "letter," and there's a podium presumably waiting to be used by the Senator himself.

O'Hear posted an interesting interview with Richir, and while it won't quiet the Second Life skeptics, it offers a good rationale for spending time and energy on a virtual campaign site:

Like our world [Second Life] is increasingly becoming global. Soldiers in Iraq, largely disenfranchised citizens in Puerto Rico, business men working in China, and rural families in Montana, can all come to Second Life, and participate on the same footing… Each of the 4 groups I described can vote absentee.

Compared to MySpace, Richir says Second Life is possibly comprised of a more informed electorate:

While SL users do not have the same numbers as, say, MySpace, they have communication skills, and a desire to communicate, that, I humbly say, exceeds that of MySpace users. For example, and this is just a guess, but I bet that half of Second Life users regularly contribute to multiple blogs. So it is a smaller community, but I would argue it is a more influential community.

I wonder who'll jump in next...

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