The Colorful History of Ben Carson's Biggest Booster

Scott Conroy is out with a comprehensive look at Ben Carson's following in Republican Iowa. Rosie Gray is up with the first look at the National Draft Ben Carson for President Committee's finances, often noted for their size–bigger than Ready for Hillary's!–but heretofore pretty opaque. The draft campaign, which is separate from Carson's own operation, has paid director Vernon Robinson "$236,000 [for] his work so far."

In discussing these stories, I was surprised at how few people remembered Robinson's 2006 campaign for Congress, when he challenged Democratic Representative Brad Miller in a safe blue seat in North Carolina. In that first election of the YouTube era, Robinson became a sensation, out-fundraising Miller by five figures even as he went down to defeat. He built a national network, helped by infamous TV ads like the spot that asked voters to consider what was wrong with an America in which "seven out of 10 black children are born out of wedlock, and Jackson and Sharpton claim the answer is racial quotas."