(FORTUNE Magazine) – To FOLKS in nearby Yoakum, Texas, Jim Bohan is just another struggling rancher. But to his compatriots on the Internet, he is Lobo Azul, Spanish for Blue Wolf, and a master of the new world of cyberpolitics. Last year, motivated in part by anger at the Democratic Congress for passing the 1994 assault-weapons ban, Bohan, along with Spokane software engineer Richard Hartman and retired rear admiral Skip Leuschner, whom he met surfing the Net, raised $27,000 from fellow Netnoids--and more than enough hell--to help unseat Speaker of the House Tom Foley.

Now Bohan and Hartman are managing NoBan, a cybercampaign of some five million people dedicated to repealing the provision. This time, Foley's replacement, Newt Gingrich, is listening. After a National Rifle Association lobbyist read him the opening of a letter from Bohan and Hartman pointing out that many of the Congressmen who supported the ban were defeated, Gingrich promised to bring the divisive issue to a vote again.

Just as the printing press made the Reformation possible, and faxes and tape recorders helped bring down the Berlin Wall, the Internet is revolutionizing politics in America. Suddenly everyone with a computer, a modem, and about $20 a month for a hookup has a political voice and platform. It amounts to publishing without editors, broadcasting without regulators, lobbying for everyman--and all in real time.

There is a dark side. Point your mouse and click for bulletin boards filled with child pornography and bestiality. Click, click for mayhem manuals replete with bomb recipes. Click, click, click for white supremacists selling hate. By using the Internet and other high-tech communication techniques, racists like Canadian rocker George Burdi have revitalized a once moribund neo-Nazi skinhead movement in the U.S. From only 1,000 activists in 1987, the movement is now four times that size, according to estimates by the Southern Poverty Law Center in Alabama.

But there is also a bright side: a truly national forum for freewheeling if sometimes raucous public debate on everything from gun control to a balanced budget to free speech. Add to that access to up-to-the-minute news and in-depth analysis, and you begin to understand the potential of this medium to give power back to the little guy--and maybe, just maybe, life back to a democracy grown weak from voter apathy and 60-second sound bites.

For the moment at least, conservatives, including angry ones like Bohan, appear to have an edge in the battle to dominate cyberpolitics. David Winston, an information technology expert at the conservative Heritage Foundation, estimates that of the 35 million or so persons who regularly use the Internet, about half are Republicans, only a quarter Democrats, and the rest independents. Moreover, most are men between ages 25 and 45 with high levels of education and income, and a strong libertarian cast. Says Ed Miller of Luntz Research, a GOP polling group: "These folks are a natural part of the just-leave-me-alone coalition of gun owners, the religious right, property-rights activists, small businesses, and tax- and spending-limitation advocates who fueled the GOP takeover of Congress in November. The Internet offers Republicans a great opportunity to expand that coalition."

That's exactly what Gingrich had in mind when he launched Congress into the Information Age by putting all congressional legislation as well as the Congressional Record online through Thomas, a new site on the Internet's World Wide Web named after Thomas Jefferson. The Heritage Foundation and National Review magazine will soon start a Website called Town Hall (http://www.townhall.com), where conservative surfers can tap into a treasure-trove of right-wing analysis. Participants include the Heritage Foundation itself, plus the Progress and Freedom Foundation--which produced Gingrich's video history course--and such advocacy groups as Jack Kemp's Empower America, the Family Research Council, the American Conservative Union, and Americans for Tax Reform, a conservative grassroots lobby that pushes the flat tax.

Some of the websites offer their own brand of interactivity. One invites users to try their hand at balancing the federal budget. Another, set up by House Majority Leader Dick Armey, gives users a form that lets them compare their current tax bill with what it would be under Armey's flat tax. And Americans for Tax Reform is developing a program to build support for privatizing Social Security by allowing people to figure just how much more they'd get at 65 by stashing away 15% of their wages in an IRA rather than paying Social Security taxes.

But while conservatives have the juice on the Net, they are by no means the only success stories. Take the National Association of Graduate and Professional Students, a low-budget operation with one part-time lobbyist based in Wilmette, Illinois. Using its E-mail list of some 20,000 students, teachers, and administrators, the group generated 1,500 letters to Congress, helping to unravel Gingrich's plan to cut student aid.

Recognizing the potential of the new medium, Democratic congressional leaders are rushing to catch up. Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle has set up a special committee to help Senators get their messages out over cable TV, talk radio, and the Internet. Meanwhile, liberal activists from the AFL-CIO to the Sierra Club and NOW have also established Websites, though they have been generally less aggressive than conservatives in building cybercoalitions.

On the other hand, liberals can boast one of the hottest sources of opposition research: Democratic consultant Matt Dorsey's NewtWatch(http://www.cais.com/newtwatch/). There, under a catchy graphic of Newt talking to Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole and a pasty extraterrestrial, you can find lists of the Speaker's contributors, his key votes since 1981, and texts of ethics committee complaints and other alleged improprieties. You can also send a nasty letter to Newt--or a donation by credit card to NewtWatch.

But whoever is ahead today can't bet he'll be there tomorrow because the Net is growing at such an explosive pace. Experts believe Microsoft's new Windows 95 software, which will make it easier for users to go online, plus the increased Internet connectivity of commercial services such as Prodigy and America Online, will double Internet traffic over the next year. In another two to four years, information technology consultant Jinny Crum-Jones predicts, most American households will have Internet access, as well as many libraries and schools. "At that point, the demographics of the Net will look more like the population as a whole."

What then of the dark side? Congress is hot to regulate it out of existence. After the Oklahoma City bombing, the Senate unanimously passed an amendment to the anti-terrorism bill that would make it a felony to teach or disseminate bomb-making material with criminal intent or knowledge. In mid-June, it voted overwhelmingly (84 to 16) to ban obscenity and restrict access to "indecent" material on the Internet.

Would these measures do the trick? The anti-bomb-making amendment does little more than apply existing law to the Internet. Fair enough. But the indecency provision sets much tougher standards for cyberspeech than for print media. That's troubling, since what's really needed is a way to shield society from the worst excesses of this new medium without undermining its great potential as a democratizing force.