The Strip Club Vote

When a few officials of the local Republican party in Cleveland, Ohio decided to treat themselves to a good old-fashioned boy's night out at a strip club, they were greeted with an alarming sight: a Fox News television crew.

"They asked me why Fox was outside," says Angelina Spencer, The Circus club owner, "and I told them they were doing a story about our voter registration campaign."

"They all scrambled and fought over the back door. One guy even got his tie caught in the door," she laughs.

Who can blame them? Strip clubs are hardly synonymous with political activism. Unlike every other industry in America, the adult entertainment business tries to stay as far away from Capitol Hill as possible. In the skin trade, discretion has mostly trumped politics – until 2004.

In this presidential election, everyone from strip club dancers to CEOs of live porn sites are encouraging their customers to get involved and vote.

Spencer, who is the executive director of ACE National, a trade association of adult nightclubs, says her political wake-up moment came when Kristin Kritzler, a 20-year-old who strips at The Circus, was sent to Iraq earlier this year.

"That opened a lot of entertainers' eyes and got them involved in politics," she says. "At that point, I realized that we were dealing with an untapped constituency."

In April, Spencer sent out 800 voter registration kits to adult nightclubs, lingerie stores and adult bookstores across the country. Approximately 160,000 customers filled out voter registration cards on the spot, but many took the cards home to mail in. "This was more successful than we ever anticipated," she says. "We never expected to get this much publicity."

Since May, 800 of the roughly 4,000 adult clubs in America have launched voter registration efforts, registering an average of 200 voters per club.

"This is the most important time to be active. There will never be a more important election," says Spike Goldberg, CEO of Homegrownvideo.com, an amateur porn streaming video site that receives 100,000 unique daily visitors. "Until now, no one has harnessed that power. This is merely the beginning."

Homegrownvideo.com’s "Get Out the Vote" banner ads link to the Rock the Vote web site. Rock the Vote doesn’t tally new voters specifically from porn sites, but overall, the non-partisan organization has registered 1.3 million new voters.

A week before the election, Goldberg plans to post a letter to his members highlighting the differences between President George Bush and Sen. John Kerry on issues including free speech, healthcare, the military, education and the war.

"We’re not in the business of telling people who to vote for, we just want them to vote," he says.

While Spencer, a registered Republican, emphasizes the fact that ACE's registration drives are also nonpartisan, she – like many others in her industry – openly expresses concern about the Bush administration, especially its Attorney General John Ashcroft's hostility toward pornography.

During a speech in 2002, Ashcroft said pornography "invades our homes persistently though the mail, phone, VCR, cable TV and the Internet," and has "strewn its victims from coast to coast."

"Ashcroft used to care more about pornography than terrorism," says Scot Powe, professor of law at the University of Texas. "The guy is a throwback to the early 50s; maybe that’s being too generous."

Over the past four years, Ashcroft's office has launched dozens of investigations of adult content businesses and filed obscenity cases against porn firms.

David Wasserman, a first amendment attorney who defends adult web site operators, says those actions are the tip of the iceberg. "My fear is that a second Bush administration will unleash a slew of prosecutions against adult entertainment web sites, video stores and producers of adult films."