Growing netroots on the right

How an anti-gay, immigrant-bashing Republican from North Carolina heisted Howard Dean's playbook and raised big bucks on the Web.

By Michael Scherer

Read more: Politics, News, Michael Scherer, Howard Dean, 2006 Elections

Clips from TV ads done by the Vernon Robinson campaign. Center: Vernon Robinson.

Oct. 20, 2006 | WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. -- Years from now, the history books will likely record Vernon Robinson as the first Republican candidate to ever discuss the libido of aroused college coeds during a live debate with a sitting member of Congress.

"A study that shows pornography to college girls, and then hooks up probes in various places to measure their sexual arousal, is about sex," Robinson told the television cameras Tuesday, in the basement studio of WXII 12, an NBC affiliate. Robinson was attacking his opponent, Rep. Brad Miller, a two-term liberal Democrat from Raleigh, who sat a few feet away. "He voted for sex studies to pay college girls to watch porno movies and measure their arousal," the conservative Robinson announced.

The merits of the charge are not in dispute. There was a 2001-2002 National Institutes of Health study on female sexual arousal that Miller and more than 200 other members of Congress voted against stripping from the federal budget. What mattered was not the relevance of the charge, but that Robinson had captured everyone's attention -- and he was just getting started. Within 40 short minutes, Robinson accused Miller of supporting "San Francisco values," voting to "allow convicted child molesters to come into this country," and co-sponsoring something Robinson nicknamed the "Foreign Homosexual Importation Act," a bill that does exist, under a different name, to allow same-sex partners to sponsor each other for citizenship. In response, Miller alternately rolled his eyes, chuckled to himself and held out his hands in exasperation. "We're back from a quick trip to planet Robinson," the congressman joked at one point.

For months now, Miller has been enduring these onslaughts. In mailings, recorded phone calls and advertising on television and radio, Robinson, who is black, has run a campaign that one local paper compared to the comedy of Dave Chappelle. One radio spot says, "If Miller had his way, America would be nothing but one big fiesta for illegal aliens and homosexuals." Another ad says, "Brad Miller spent your money to study the masturbation habits of old men." A mailing accuses Miller of having a "San Francisco Soul Mate" in Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, a popular liberal blogger at DailyKos.

But it is Robinson himself who may have more in common with the man from DailyKos, at least when it comes to politics in the digital age. He has raised a seven-figure sum for his campaign -- a fundraising success he traces to a most unlikely political mentor, a man he has never met and probably never agreed with: Howard Dean, the chairman of the Democratic Party. National political handicappers give Robinson virtually no chance of winning -- but his campaign has turned on its head the idea that the so-called netroots are the exclusive domain of the political far left. In terms of mustering financial support and doing so fast, at least one candidate on the far right has now successfully jumped into the game.

Robinson's outlandish high jinks have created a lively, inflammatory race, wherein Robinson flirts with demagogy amid the prospect of near-certain loss. As a state legislator, Miller helped to draw his 13th Congressional District into a Democratic stronghold, which presidential candidate John Kerry carried in 2004, even as President Bush won the state. It's a northern block of the state that includes parts of the academic communities surrounding North Carolina State University and the University of North Carolina, as well as the federal prison in Butner where former California Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham is serving his sentence for accepting bribes.

The race is so safe for Miller, in fact, that the campaign has baffled outside observers. "I'm a political scientist who looks at people's behavior through the lens of rationality, and Robinson doesn't make sense," says Andrew Taylor, a political scientist at North Carolina State. "He is not going for the median voter."

Still, Robinson's campaign is among the most successful efforts of the 2006 election cycle when it comes to fundraising. Through the third quarter of this year, he has raised $1.5 million for his campaign, about $28,000 more than Miller. While about 40 percent of Miller's money came from corporate and union political action committees, Robinson has raised 98 percent of his money from nearly 24,000 individual donors around the country. He has become, in a word, an Internet phenom, with several popular YouTube videos and a campaign that has raised more than $400,000 online in this election cycle. Many of his donors have no real money to give away. "There are hundreds of people who send in $1, $2 or $4," says Nate Pendley, a lawyer in nearby Clemmons, who is friends with Robinson and has produced his ads. "Obviously we are never going back. Politics has changed forever."

"Essentially, I am doing what Howard [Dean] did," Robinson told me, several hours after the debate, during a drive to his next event. "Howard took a stand, called a spade a spade in the Iraq war, and excited the left." A few moments later, he thought back on the first time he visited the Dean for America Web site during the 2004 primaries, when Dean was running for president. "I was astonished," he said. "I remember looking at that Web site for three hours in horrid fascination. The meet-ups. There were 120,000 people meeting up across the country with one agenda -- kill Republicans. And the Republicans were in this top-down, who-cares-what-the-grass-roots-has-to-say [campaign]."

As Robinson spoke, I gripped the steering wheel of my car with both hands, an audio recorder sticking out from between my fingers. We were traveling through a heavy rainstorm down the accident-strewn roads that connect Winston-Salem to Raleigh, where Robinson was scheduled for a meet-and-greet with college students. Unlike Miller, who had come to the debate with his wife and four well-dressed staffers, Robinson had arrived alone in a rumpled suit, with a bunch of notes folded up in his hand. Afterward, he had gladly accepted my offer to drive him to the next event, in exchange for a chance to speak with him about his campaign. Standing at about 6-foot-4, with the stature of a bear, he fit awkwardly in the passenger seat of my midsize sedan. "I'm a Wal-Mart Republican, not a country club Republican," he explained.

Next page: How Robinson's inflammatory "Twilight Zone" campaign ad caught fire -- two years after it was made