Ben Tribbett is the founder and editor of the Not Larry Sabato blog. Ben is best known for breaking the “macaca” story and helping to build up a frenzy on his blog over the weekend, prior to release of the video in the Washington Post on Monday, August 14, 2006. The following interview was conducted on April 17, 2007 in Springfield, Virginia.
Lowell: A key turning point in the primary, at least according to people like Steve Jarding, was the St. Patrick’s Day Gerry Connolly event. In some ways, this was the first major victory for Jim Webb.
Ben: I don’t know if that was a turning point. It may have hurt Webb a little bit among party insiders. Gerry was going around trashing Webb. Typical Gerry being totally ungrateful to a couple hundred people who showed up and wrote him a check. But Gerry telling others at the event the Webb supporters were all people he didn’t know and were probably Republicans swung some organization to Miller.
I’m skeptical that there was a turning point, when we did our automated poll of Northern Virginia for NLS in March, Webb was leading by 21 points, in the primary he won by 22. That poll was before any word had gotten out to the broader public about the St. Patrick’s Day event. One thing I told Jarding…what I was hearing from people in NOVA, people who populated the Federal government wanted a candidate who was more qualified to be in the Senate than they were personally. Miller - totally private background, no federal experience, in totally over his head. Secretary of Navy, Asst. Sec. of Defense…people up here understand what that means. They don’t necessarily understand how important it is to be a Deputy Secretary of Defense in other parts of the state. I think in Northern Virginia you need to have been Governor, or in Congress, or significant Federal experience… to get support to the Senate.
Lowell: How was the race playing out on the blogs during the primary. We were getting outspent 3:1 by Harris Miller, we didn’t run TV ads, we didn’t have much of anything except for the blogs.
Ben: It was such a disappointment during the primary. So much money was wasted on consultants by the Webb campaign. Clearly what happened, [there was] a campaign manager from out of state, clearly didn’t know what she was doing. [There were] paid consultants to run the rallies even, which cost a lot of money. In a primary…that money was just going out the door. The Webb campaign was overconsulted but understaffed during the primary. The little money they had going to things other than voter contact was beyond pathetic.
Lowell: Did the grassroots save Webb? For instance, the petition drive was completed by the grassroots.
Ben: It was a frenzy effect. Everything on the blogs was that Miller can’t win, “this is outrageous, we gotta get Webb in there.” [It was] motivating OUR people to get out, working them into a frenzy, national people as well. The average Miller supporter wasn’t doing anything. [It was] starting to look like maybe we can get to 6 (pickups in the U.S. Senate). That was working our people into a frenzy. We are not going to get there with Harris Miller in there. People would get on the blogs, it was motivating them. Webb has turned out to be pretty ungrateful, I don’t think he understands the difference between his campaign and other normal campaigns…this isn’t how campaigns usually go. He’s acted like this was normal or something.
Lowell: How did you see the netroots working with the campaign?
Ben: I thought it was better in the primary than in the general. In the primary, we just kind of ignored the staff. They were so in over their heads. It was in the general election, they were like, “we won the primary, we won the primary, you have to do this or you have to do that.” I’m not good at getting in line, when they say get in line, my attitude is “FU.” The primary gave them a measure of confidence that they had really done a good job on the campaign.
Lowell: There was some feeling that the campaign should ditch the netroots…certain Virginia politicos felt resentment, threatened by netroots.
Ben: That’s hilarious. We were having so much fun in the primary…bashing local officials who endorsed Miller. They turn on the blogs and everyone’s going nuts, saying things like “you traitor.” They weren’t used to it. It had a huge impact on a number of them.
Lowell: Why do you think Harris Miller didn’t even really try to court the blogs/netroots?
Ben: It’s funny because in my case I was supporting Webb but was staying a little neutral at the beginning because we wanted to do a blogosphere debate. I had to stay a little neutral. The Webb campaign agreed, the Miller campaign never got back on it. If they can’t even get back to the blogs, I’m not going to feign independence. That’s when I just started bashing him every day.
Lowell: Did the Miller campaign decide they weren’t going to deal with netroots?
Ben: Yeah. If you can’t get NLS or RK, there are other ways to go about it. Their attitude was once RK went against them, they blew off everybody. [That showed their] lack of knowledge. Their whole campaign was so based on party hierarchy, party structure, and they didn’t think they could do that with the blogs. They were such a hierarchy-based campaign, the attitude was if we can’t have the big blogs, we can’t do anything.