Anti-Clinton ad puts spotlight on Obama

The Internet video sensation that targeted Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton now has rival Sen. Barack Obama on the spot.

Heralded by many as the embodiment of Web-driven citizen activism, the mysterious YouTube ad now stands revealed as the work of a Democratic operative employed by a consulting firm with Obama links.

"It's true ... yeah, it's me," said Philip de Vellis, a 33-year-old strategist with Blue State Digital, a Washington company that advises Democratic candidates and liberal groups.

Blue State helped design Obama's Web site, and one of the firm's founding members, Joe Rospars, took a leave from the company to work as Obama's director of new media.

Obama, Blue State and de Vellis all say de Vellis acted on his own. De Vellis left the company on Wednesday. He said he resigned; Thomas Gensemer, the firm's managing director, said he was fired.

The entire episode hangs a cloud over the Obama camp.

Since he arrived on the national political scene, Obama has won convert after convert with a vow to rise above the bare-knuckle fray of politics.

However tenuous, any link to the ad, with its Orwellian image of Clinton as Big Brother, raises questions the Obama camp would rather not face.

In a statement, the Obama campaign said it "had no knowledge and had nothing to do with the creation of the ad."

"Blue State Digital has separated ties with this individual and we have been assured he did no work on our campaign's account," it added.

In what was apparently a widely disseminated e-mail last month, de Vellis asked acquaintances to join the My.BarackObama.com network. In it, he wrote: "I designed the MyBarackObama toolbox that is on the front page and all the sidebar pages."

Thomas Gensemer, Blue State Digital's managing director, said that simply meant de Vellis had worked on the generic software that Blue State is making available to clients, including the Obama campaign.

"It's going to be rolled out in other campaigns," Gensemer said.

De Vellis, in a blog he wrote after he had been identified by Huffingtonpost.com, appeared to acknowledge the trouble he had brewed. "I support Senator Obama," he wrote. "I hope he wins the primary. (I recognize that this ad is not his style of politics)."

Clinton on Thursday said the Internet had become "new territory for everybody."

"We're all trying to figure out what this new technology means not only to political campaigns but to how we do business, how we relate to one another," she said.

The unmasking of de Vellis also cracks the enticing image of the Internet as a freewheeling arena where average citizens engage in vigorous, often provocative, discourse.

De Vellis said he acted like any techno-savvy, politically attuned Web surfer. He said he worked on a Sunday in his apartment, using his Mac computer and video editing software to alter an updated version of a classic Apple ad that aired during the Super Bowl in 1984.

But the fact remains that de Vellis was a political professional. He had worked for Democratic Rep. Sherrod Brown in his successful campaign for U.S. Senate in Ohio. And he was working for a firm with political clients, including Obama.

"Obviously some people are going to look at this and see that I'm working in politics and they'll think that it's kind of disingenuous or not genuine," de Vellis said in an interview with The Associated Press. "I still think that ordinary citizens can change politics. It could have been anyone else who could have made this ad."

The ad portrayed Clinton on a huge television screen addressing an audience that sat in a trancelike state. A female athlete, running ahead of storm troopers, sprints into the auditorium and tosses a hammer at the screen, destroying Clinton's image. "On January 14th the Democratic primary will begin," the text states. "And you will see why 2008 isn't going to be like '1984.'" It signs off with "BarackObama.com"

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On the Web:

Clinton: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v6h3G-lMZxjo

Obama: http://www.youtube.com/watch?vdycbAsB9-ps