Blue State Digital

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Blue State Digital

Type	Private
Founded	2004
Headquarters	Washington, D.C.
Key people	Jascha Franklin-Hodge (Founding Partner) & (CTO) Thomas Gensemer (Managing Partner) Joe Rospars (Founding Partner) Ben Self (Founding Partner) & (Program Director)
Industry	Consulting
Website	www.bluestatedigital.com

Blue State Digital is an Internet strategy and technology firm based in Washington, D.C. The company was founded in early 2004 by four members of the Howard Dean Presidential Campaign: Clay A. Johnson, Jascha Franklin-Hodge, Joe Rospars, and Ben Self. They are involved in providing custom Internet applications and communications strategies to Democratic organizations, political candidates, and non-profit organizations. Clay left the firm in late January of 2008, leaving just three founding partners.

Blue State Digital was a recipient of the Fast Company magazine Fast 50 award in 2006.

[edit] 2007 "Hillary Clinton 1984" YouTube video

A former employee of Blue State Digital, Philip de Vellis, admitted to having created a widely-circulated video, Hillary 1984 , that edited clips from Hillary Clinton campaign videos into the famous 1984 television advertisement by Apple Inc. In a blog entry posted on The Huffington Post, de Vellis indicated that he had resigned from Blue State Digital.^[1] The company later released a statement claiming that they had terminated his employment. Mr. de Vellis stated in an interview with the Associated Press that he had created the video from home and that Blue State Digital had nothing to do with its creation.^{[citation needed]}

The Barack Obama campaign released a statement on the news, stating: "The Obama campaign or its employees had no knowledge and had nothing to do with the creation of the ad. We were notified this evening by a vendor of ours, Blue State Digital, that an employee of the company had been involved in the making of this ad. Blue State Digital has separated ties with this individual and we have been assured he did no work on our campaign's account."

However, de Vellis has claimed that he helped design the Obama website ^[2]. And de Vellis lived with Senator Obama's press secretary in 2006 ^[3] while they were both working on Sherrod Brown's campaign for Senate.