Kay Daly and Vernon Robinson

There has been a lot of discussion lately about Vernon Robinson’s outrageous campaign ads – especially his “Twilight Zone” ad which says

“If you’re a conservative Republican, watching the news these days can make you feel as though you are in ‘The Twilight Zone.’  Americans are under attack from Islamic extremists in every corner of the world. Homosexuals are mocking holy matrimony and the lesbians and feminists are attacking everything sacred. Liberal judges have completely re-written the Constitution. You can burn the American flag and kill a million babies a year but you can’t post the Ten Commandments or say ‘God’ in public. Seven out of every 10 children are born out of wedlock and [Rev. Jesse] Jackson and [Al] Sharpton claim the answer is racial quotas. And the aliens are here but they didn’t come in a spaceship, they came across our unguarded Mexican border by the millions.”

Just the other day, Chris Matthews showed the ad on “Hardball” where he praised it, saying “This is tough, it's strong, it makes fun of the other side viciously, but I remember it. I'm going to remember this ad.”

Robinson certainly has generated a lot of press with his outrageous ads, but what has gone unnoticed is who produced his ads

These advertisements were produced by Daly & Associates, Inc., a strategic communications/target marketing firm. If you are a candidate, corporate entity or non-profit with a need to get your message out, contact Kay Daly at kay.daly@gmail.com

Kay Daly just so happens to be the president of the Coalition for a Fair Judiciary, a one-person astroturf operation that focuses on the issue of judicial nominations (though it doesn’t appear to do much, considering that it hasn’t even issued so much as a press release since early January 2006). Nonetheless, Daly does have close ties to Manuel Miranda - the former Frist staffer who resigned amid allegations he had unethically obtained internal Democratic Senate Judiciary Committee documents – who now heads something called the Third Branch Conference, often adding her signature to Third Branch Conference letters, along with dozens of other right-wing figures.  According to The Hill, the history between Daly and Robinson goes back to at least 2004 when Robinson was running against Nathan Tabor in the Republican primary:

The latest salvo came in an e-mail sent out last week to hundreds of potential voters and reporters from the Yahoo account of “Pastor Randy.” Purportedly in support of Tabor, the message was a thinly disguised smear campaign. “Dear Fellow Christian Prayer Warrior,” the e-mail began, “Nathan Tabor desperately needs your intercessory prayers today. We had all hoped to keep this hush-hush for obvious reasons, but now the cat is out of the bag, so I might as well tell you straight up.” Interspersed with biblical citations and exhortations of prayer, the e-mail listed a litany of misleading and damaging personal attacks against Tabor, 30, who is making his first political race. “Nathan will be facing multiple charges in Wilkes County Criminal District Court today stemming from an incident … several weeks ago,” wrote “Pastor Randy.” “It is my understanding that Nathan is in fact guilty of one or more of the charges pending against him in the criminal court. … Please be aware, however, that he has hired a fancy Forsyth County lawyer who is said to be a real ‘wheeler-dealer’ type. ... “Please pray that it be God’s will that Nathan will not have to spend one second behind bars. ... Those people would love nothing better than to get hold of a young white boy like Nathan, and as a newlywed, he does not need something like this at this time in his life.” Tabor was recently married. His wife, age 21 and identified by name, was described in the e-mail as “a sweet young girl, but a girl who is too young to buy a beer” and “too young to live on her own while her husband is in prison.”) The e-mail further assured readers that Tabor — termed a “soyboy playboy” in reference to his soymilk dietary supplement firm — did not offer a bribe” to a state trooper and that “there were NO drugs found in the car itself. If you have heard someone say that his current legal trouble involves drugs, that is NOT TRUE. ... THERE WERE NO DRUGS INVOLVED IN THE CURRENT CRIMINAL TROUBLE, PERIOD.” The truth, it turns out, is far less titillating. Tabor was stopped some months ago by a state trooper and charged with speeding and possessing an expired driver’s license — charges to which Tabor readily confessed.

The Robinson campaign denied having anything to do with the email, but as The Hill said

That, however, turns out not to be the case. Yesterday the Tabor campaign said it traced the message to a computer IP address in the Washington area — and that Cox Communications, an Internet service provider, confirmed the computer’s signature as registered to longtime Robinson associates Jack and Kay Daly. Kay Daly is a media consultant and top employee of Robinson’s campaign.

Daly, of course, denied any involvement and, in language one would expect from a representative of a Robinson campaign, simply stated “I think it’s time that [Tabor] be given a heavy does [sic] of Ritalin and a bottle and be put in his crib.”