"Political junkies all over the country know Larry Sabato. For reporters at major newspapers from The Los Angeles Times to The Washington Post, the mustachioed director of UVA’s Center for Politics is the go-to guy for political analysis.

Sabato is particularly famous for offering a horserace-style analysis of politics couched in quotes like the one he recently gave to the Denver Post. In a July 7 article about the upcoming battle between Republicans and Democrats over the Supreme Court nominee, Sabato said: “It’s hard to imagine that this one won’t be nasty.” No shit.

The combination of Sabato’s ubiquity and occasional innocuousness has prompted a back-lash from a quartet of smartasses in the blogosphere. Two Democrats and two Republicans writing under the name “Not Larry Sabato” have created a blog (http://virginia2005.blogspot.com) to analyze Virginia politics from a non-Sabato point of view.

“It was kind of a joke about how everywhere you go, you see him quoted,” says one of the bloggers, who names himself only as Not Larry Sabato. “We thought that if our blog became big enough, newspapers would quote us as a counter to him. Like, ‘Larry Sabato said this, but Not Larry Sabato said this.’”

Besides the fact that they are not Larry Sabato, one thing that’s clear about the bloggers is that they are plugged into both the Virginia Democratic and Republican parties. That’s the reason the bloggers refuse to announce their identities.

“There’s no point in doing this if you’re not anonymous,” says Not Sabato. “We’re putting out information we get in secret meetings…if people knew who we were, we wouldn’t get invited.”

Not Larry Sabato says he and his fellow not-Sabatos started the blog to shed some light on how political campaigns actually work behind the theater of press releases and photo ops.

“Most incumbents in this state are out of control,” he says. “They don’t care about the impact of anything they do. There’s extraordinary arrogance on both sides. They want to do their stuff in the dark, and they don’t like people discussing anything about them.”

The bigwigs have apparently been reading the Not Larrys. On a recent post, one Not Larry says that when the blog mocked a photo of Democrat Brian Moran posted on the delegate’s official website, the picture was replaced within two days. When the blog chastised Republican Jim Hyland for negative attacks, the candidate’s message turned much more positive. “We’re getting reports back from the meetings… we hear they’re all complaining about the blog,” Not Sabato says.

One person who isn’t complaining is Larry Sabato. “I thought it was hilarious,” says Sabato, who recently posted a comment on the blog saying so. “I don’t think they meant it as a dig. I’m at the age where in order to survive, I frequently interpret insults as backhanded compliments.”" (John Borgmeyer, C-Ville Weekly, July 12, 2005)

Editor's Note: Evidence of the self-referential element in Blogging is shown by the posting of the above article on the NLS blogspot, followed rapidly by comments like this from anonymous:

Blah blah, we're so good. Why don't you guys get off the obvious ego trip and stick to the campaigns? It's almost comical how much you all are caught up in your fleeting 15 seconds of "fame."

Others join in, including the self-styled Not Paul Goldman. And the thread continues, including a later post from Anonymous,

Anyone else have a problem with the fact that the number of "Look at all the attention I'm getting" posts are pretty much equal to the "relevent information about the election" posts?

Provide coverage of the elections NLS, we don't need any new articles to help us find our way to the blog, we are already here.

Oh, and I'll believe that there are 4 people blogging under the name "Not Larry Sabato" when hell freezes over and pigs fly all at the same time.