Mark Nicholas Moves On

Mark Nicholas, well known for his blog about Democratic politics in Kentucky, Bluegrass Report, is leaving Kentucky to move to Montana. He says in his current front page post that he's going to continue the site from there for the time being while making a decision about the future of the site and its community. He reports that over 1.8 million people have viewed the site over 5 million times. There have been 70,000 comments on his posts in its 23 month run.

Bluegrass Report is one of the reasons I'm involved in Cotton Mouth. Like myself, Mark made his living working on campaigns and we have a shared network of friends. And he was an outsider to KY's organization. That perspective allowed him to be critical of the shortfalls of his party while constantly working to make it better. The results of the KY Democratic primary Tuesday night are proof that blogs can change states. The candidate he bashed lost handily. He actively supported two candidates. One of them is the democratic nominee for Governor. The other was named chairman of the KY Democratic party today. I was talking to a friend whose candidate had been on the bad end of the netroots community and when talking about the loss he said "what do you expect to happen when BGR hits you in the head every day for three months?"

In addition to demonstrating what a blog can do to advance a truly progressive agenda, Mark has been a great help to me while we've been getting Cotton Mouth off the ground. John Leek said "What we need is a big democratic blog " and after the opportunity became available to be more than tangentially involved in the project, Mark was the first person I contacted to find out how to make this happen. He helped guide us through the issues that we faced in terms of the community you want to create. We don't have a diary system largely because Mark Nicholas said it was a bad idea and was terribly convincing.

I hope that he keeps it up, either in its current manifestation or as a larger national site. We need him. But regardless of the future of Bluegrass Report, Mark Nicholas is a hell of a guy and We wish him the best.