Raising Kaine

Raising Kaine, also known as "RK", is the leading progressive state political blog in Virginia. It functions as a group blog and community forum for Virginia netroots activists, whose efforts are primarily directed toward helping to elect Democrats and progressives in Virginia and nationally.

RK is among the most popular examples of a collaborative blog, offering comment and diary posting privileges to its visitors. RK was founded by Lowell Feld and Eric Grim in January 2005 with one of the main goals being to help "raise" Democratic Lieutenant Governor Tim Kaine to the governor's mansion. In addition, the blog aimed to help elect Democrats up and down the ballot throughout Virginia, while promoting progressive causes and values.

RK has an average monthly traffic of about 80,000-100,000 visits. It is financially sustained by advertising, with Google AdSense, ClickToBlue, and Blogads. The ads focus mostly on activist causes, media, and political candidates.

As with many leading state and local blogs, RK runs on the SoapBlox software.

Content

Lowell Feld, Eric Grim, and a small group of selected users post entries directly to the front page; other users can post "diaries," the titles of which appear on the front page in reverse chronological order, with special attention and longer display time for those diaries highly recommended by other users. The other major source of content is the myriad comments posted in response to front page entries and diaries. Comments for popular or controversial diaries or front page threads can run into the thousands.

Front page entries and diaries often take the form of a news story from an outside source interspersed with commentary from the author of the diary or post. Sometimes these stories contain a request for action from other members of the community, such as to get involved with a particular campaign, give money to a candidate or contact an elected official about an issue. Some front page entries are called "open threads", which are an open platform for comments on any issue. One of the most popular versions of these open threads are "live threads" of commentary on important events happening in real time, such as debates or elections.

Contributors

Prominent contributors

Numerous political figures use RK to publish frequent or occasional content, including consultants, candidates, and members of the Virginia General Assembly. Prominent posters include:

Contributing Editors Lowell Feld Eric (Eric Grim) Teacherken (Ken Bernstein) Rob The Gray Havens The Green Miles (Miles Grant) Teddy (Teddy Goodson) Chris Guy Eric Byler JMU Duke Kathy in Blacksburg Ron1 Nate Wilcox faithfull Evan M (Evan Macbeth) Dan (Dan Fleischmann) Webb for Senate campaign During the 2006 U.S. election cycle, RK helped found the "Draft James Webb" movement, which ultimately helped persuade James Webb to run for U.S. Senate against George Allen. Throughout the campaign, RK was a major proponent of Jim Webb's nomination and election. In July 2006, Lowell Feld and Josh Chernila were hired by the Webb campaign as netroots and volunteer coordinator, respectively. External links RK