Hernando Patriot

The Hernando Patriot (THP) is a Tea Party news webiste and content aggregating blog founded by Leroy Jenkins (most likely an alias), featuring varous news sources and commentary. The site offers coverage of local politics, business, media, the Hernando County Tea Party, world news, and original content. The Hernando Patriot was launched on August 2, 2010, as an alternative news source to combat what was percieved to be a Pro-Richard Nugent bias in the local media during the 2010 Republican Primaries for the 5th Congressional District. The Hernando Patriot self proclaim's to be affiliated with nationally syndicated, conservative radio talk show, "The Savage Nation" which is hosted weekly by Michael Savage.

Following the close of the 2010 Republican Primaries, The Hernando Patriot, noticebly altered its publication format to be more of a voice for the membership to the local Hernando County Tea Party and less of a campaign device for 2010 Republican Primary candidate Jason Sager. Despite its publication frequency, The Hernando Patriot has an active community and recieves around one thousand views each month.

History
The Hernando Patriot provides local news, editorials, commentaries, and world news in a blog styled, daily digest format. Its editorial content is predominatly from a constitutional or right-libertarian perspective and describes itself as an independent membership based publication of the Hernando County Tea Party.

The Hernando Patriot has had two periods of existence during its short time as an active publication. From January 10, 2009 when it was established, The Hernando Patriot, was a very popular blog site for those in Hernando County that supported the growing Tea Party Movement. When the Hernando County Tea Party was established in March 2009 the readership of the blog jumped from three hundred views a month to just under a thousand views per month.

It was able to maintain this level of views each month until The Hernando Patriot deleted itself from Word Press blog system in early August 2010. It did not post anything until it re-launched itself on November 18, 2010 following the close of the General Elections in Hernando County. During this down time the blog lost a number of its earlier articles and suffered a large decline in readership.

Contributors
In addition to columns by Leroy Jenkins and a core group of Tea Party "ghost writers", The Hernando Patriot has 13 bloggers - consisting of local political candidates, and academics - who contribute from time to time on a wide range of topics.

The site also publishes (without permission) columns from other national political news sites that are written by national political pundits such as Michael Savage, Rush Limbaugh, Neil Bortz, Michelle Malkin, Thomas DeLorenzo, and Walter E. Williams.

Controversies
The Hernando Patriot has published articles that have created controversies and criticism of the site by other media outlets and by residents of Hernando County, Florida.

2010 Republican Primaries
Towards the close of the 2010 Republican Primaries, when The Hernando Patriot was created, the site published numerous articles attacking Republican candidate Richard Nugent and out-going Republican Congresswoman Ginny Brown-Waite, and praised the other Republican candidate Jason Sager.

The Hernando Patriot defend its actions because Jason Sager was the official Tea Party candidate and Richard Nugent was not. It also went on to state that Richard Nugent was not the Tea Party candidate because he was rumored to support the Clinton Assualt Weapons Ban and Obama's Off-Shore Drilling Ban. It contended that its actions were not in support of Jason Sager, but was instead in support of the Tea Party Movement which had endorsed Sager.

Supporters of Richard Nugent and Ginny Brown-Waite condended that The Hernando Patriot was nothing more then a mud slinging arm of Jason Sager's campaign and that its staff of bloggers was nothing more then a group of "Sager Bots". This was a derogitory term applied to supporters of 5th Congressional District, Republican primary candidate Jason Sager by supporters of his Republican challenger, Richard Nugent.

The controversy reached a peak in late September 2010 when a number of The Hernando Patriot's readers showed up to a pro-Sager, Hernando County Tea Party, road side protest with Barack Obama styled campaign signs depicting Republican candidate Richard Nugent as RINO (Republican In Name Only). This further enraged supporters of Richard Nugent and caused a media fire storm in Hernando County between the Sager and Nugent political camps and put the Hernando County Tea Party in the middle of the mud slinging. In defense the Hernando County Tea Party officially submitted a press release condeming Richard Nugent as a RINO, which caused the Nugent campain to issue numerous press releases attacking the employment record and educational level of his opponet Jason Sager.

After a week of very heated back-and-fourth mud slinging both the Sager campaign and the Hernando County Tea Party refrained from responding to the attacks being lobbed by the Nugent campaign. A week before the 2010 Primary Elections The Hernando Patriot deleted its blog publication from the Word Press blog system and did not return to the web until after both the 2010 Primary Elections and the 2010 General Elections had both concluded.

Attack on Hernando County Voters
On November 18, 2010, The Hernando Patriot published an article titled, Hernando County Residents Dumb? this was the first local article posted following the deletion of the first Hernando Patriot site shortly before the 2010 Primary Elections. The article which was written by Hernando Patriot, Editor-in-Chief, Leroy Jenkins openly attacks everyone living in Hernando County, that was a registered Republican and chose to vote for Richard Nugent during the 2010 Primary Elections.