Young progressive schools state’s right wing

A dozen years ago, the New Yorker ran a cartoon in which a pooch sitting at a computer tells a canine pal, “On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.” I was reminded of that famous gag this week when the founder of the Northwest Progressive Institute – not to mention a Pacific Northwest Portal for progressive bloggers and the Permanent Defense group opposing anti-tax activist Tim Eyman – told me he’s a high school senior.

Andrew Villeneuve, 18, kicked off our e-mail exchange after he heard I was working up a column on his new blog showcase. Launched at the end of January at nwprogressive.org, the Pacific Northwest Portal stands as the left’s answer to Sound Politics, home of several prominent Washington Republican bloggers and a key voice in the state’s right-wing echo chamber.

The competing progressive portal aggregates the content of two dozen liberal bloggers from Washington, Oregon and Idaho – including the well-regarded, if unfortunately named, HorsesAss.org and the lively Washington State Political Report. (The latter blog’s creator piqued my curiosity about the portal by vehemently attacking one of my online posts recently.)

“Rather than create one mega-blog … we thought an information gateway that provided easy access to already existing blogs was the better approach,” Villeneuve says, contrasting his site with conservative Sound Politics. “Plus, our focus is different. We’re not just blogs. We also provide newswires, which carry news from the mainstream media. … We are basically an alternative media source that helps progressives/liberals stay on top of the blogosphere and current events.”

As he finishes 12th grade in Redmond, Villeneuve was excited to have his first newspaper op-ed piece published as well. His commentary, headlined “Eyman out to destroy representative democracy,” appeared in Tuesday’s Seattle P-I. The young author is identified in a tagline as “the chair of Permanent Defense.” That’s the group he formed way back in junior high.

Next came the Northwest Progressive Institute, the “volunteer think tank” Villeneuve created in 2003 during his summer break. Most of the institute’s work – including the blog portal – has been conducted online. But the group plans to help “progressive candidates and campaigns win elections” in other ways “as more and more people express an interest in our organization,” its founder says.

Like the seasoned political pro he aspires to be, Villeneuve brushed off an attempt to gauge specific traffic to the portal, divulging only that it’s “measured in thousands.” But the PNP has received positive notices from influential left-wing blog Daily Kos, and Villeneuve is making a splash in at least two of the state’s biggest dailies this week, so who are we to say he’s not an emerging political force?

Stephen Phillips, who writes as Carl Ballard at Washington State Political Report, believes PNP helps the region’s progressive blogs make a bigger impact without sacrificing their independent voices. “We felt like we were getting beat on talk radio, beat on the blogs, and we ought to do something,” says Phillips, 25, a Vashon Island office worker and volunteer firefighter.

Villeneuve, who brought those left-leaning bloggers together between homework sessions, says he “eventually” will attend the University of Washington and “will continue to be active in progressive campaigns and politics for years and years to come.”

What drives a teen to pour his energies into politics like that? “I was worried about the direction this nation was taking and I wanted to do something about it,” he says.

On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a role model.