Player: Russo worked for the Clinton-Gore team in '96.

"When I learned how to hook up with guys on the Internet, I was managing Larry Friedman's campaign for state representative," writes the blogger. "Managing that campaign in 1996 was a lonely affair - underpaid, overworked and stuck in an office above a car phone installation garage. Boredom introduced me to AOL chat rooms, and ... it was like finding the perfect sex supermarket. Every variation on sex anyone can imagine was there, in stark relief, sorted by geography, city, desire, age, body shape, fetish, m4f, m4m, f4f, group ... the world's most perfect index of sexuality."

This is part of Tim Russo's autobiography, dished out in short posts on his new site, BloggerInterrupted.com, which he launched in April. Russo is one of Ohio's most infamous and influential political bloggers. He's opinionated, educated and insightful. After years spent as a political consultant, he knows who is connected to whom and why. But instead of politics, Russo had to talk about himself when he started a new blog, because of what happened after Friedman's unsuccessful campaign introduced him to the world of online cruising.

"One day in April 2001, someone pretending to be 13 years old showed up in the chat room," he writes. "I struck up a chat. It proceeded very rapidly to discussions of sex."

That 13-year-old boy was actually an FBI agent posing as a teenager online.

Until now, Russo hasn't spoken to reporters (on the record, anyway) about the convenience-store rendezvous that was set up with the teen, his subsequent arrest and conviction, and the impact it still has on his daily life. He hasn't spoken about the local candidates who used him, on the cheap, to get elected, then turned their backs on him once it happened because they couldn't have a convicted sex offender on staff. But he's talking now. And writing. A lot. He hopes that finally doing so will save his life.

"Sometimes, it gets so hard, you don't see a way out," he says. "I see a way out, now - talking about it, not hiding from it. I don't give a shit anymore. There has to be a whole Tim. It's time to take the last shot."

RUSSO IS ALLERGIC to eggs, but when he was a kid his parents thought that the vomiting that sometimes occurred after breakfast was a form of protest. After he was finally diagnosed, his parents were extra cautious with him. "No athletics. No goodies. No pets," he writes.

The vomiting stopped, but the price was his social development. His classmates knew he was different and it killed his self-esteem before it could grow. He sat at the front of the bus "because that's where the shy kids sit to keep the bullies from picking on you."

Adding to his sense of strangeness and isolation was his attraction to both girls and boys.

"When the bus dropped off Sherry, my heart would follow her out the window all the way up her driveway," he writes. "And then there was Bobby, just two doors down, and hot as hell ... Boys hooking up in the early '80s wasn't cool. It was dangerous as fuck."

But hook up they did, sometimes in the crudely constructed fort behind their houses, sometimes in a neighbor's garage. They were 15.

"I don't remember exactly how my first time with Bobby started, whether he made the first move or I did," he writes. "I do know that Bobby proposed the deal first - I'll suck yours if you suck mine. It's pretty clear to me that Bobby never intended to hurt me with our little secret. He just wanted to have fun and check shit out, like I did."

There were two reasons it did hurt Russo: He liked it, and he was Catholic. And over the years, the more public and more successful that Russo the lawyer and Russo the political consultant became, the more the other half of him retreated into secrecy and shame, until the only safe outlet for his desires was the anonymity of AOL chatrooms.

His first political success was an essay on Americanism written for the American Legion in high school; they gave him a medal. He graduated from Cleveland State University in 1989 and he earned his law degree from Case Western Reserve University five years later. But he didn't practice law for long. Instead, he traveled the world with the National Democratic Institute, spreading democracy in Armenia, Russia, the West Bank. For appearances, he tried to have girlfriends. But he always found excuses to end the relationships before they could get serious. Once, he broke up with a woman because she didn't react with appropriate dismay after the Browns cut Bernie Kosar.

Man of the world I: In Armenia with the NDI in the late '90s.

When he discovered an online world where no one judged him, he became enthralled, turning down jobs and burning bridges so that he could spend more time cruising for sex on the 'Net.

"The Gore 2000 campaign offered me half the state of Ohio [to manage] in December 1999," he writes. "Not good enough, how dare you. Next stop, resignation from Ted Celeste's US Senate campaign - don't you know who I am? I got offered a super NDI gig in Kosovo in early 2001, turned it down over the number of flights they wouldn't pay for. Fuck off, I said. In writing."

By the spring of 2001, Russo was back home, living with his parents, spending most of his time on the computer, "looking for work in one browser window, for sex in five others, completely unaware of the irony of sneaking around for sex from my parents' house at age 34 just as I had at age 15. I sat there zombie-like, mornings, afternoons, late nights in utterly ridiculous interaction with other men, reduced to mere discussions of bodies and logistics. Top or bottom? Into sucking? Swallow? Smooth or hairy? Work out? Got a pic? Where at? When? Address? Looking back on it now, I wonder if I was even human anymore."

Russo is attractive in an almost feminine way, with light, wavy hair and flawless skin, and looks years younger than his true age. Even today, at 41, he could pass for 29 in the right light. In 2001, he pretended to be younger and younger - eventually flirting with being 18 again, at least to the men he met in their homes after brief chats online.

And that's when he met the FBI agent in the adult chatroom, pretending to be a 13-year-old boy. Russo makes it clear, though, that he was the one who sent the first IM.

"Got any porn to share?" asked the faux boy later. "What would we do if we were alone?" After many chats, an in-person meeting was scheduled for late November.

"It never occurred to me that it was November sweeps, time to fill the evening news with sex," he writes. "I never thought, hey, wait a second, kids don't talk like that. They don't conveniently live down the road from my parents' house."

He took his father's van but he had told the agent/13-year-old that he would be driving his black Honda. He made the last-minute switch, he explains, because he wanted the option to drive away if he changed his mind. And that's what he did, after circling the convenience store several times. But as he started for home, a police cruiser pulled him over. And suddenly he understood. Soon, he would understand the timing of the sting, as well. On the way to jail, the officer pulled over to the side of the road by Jacobs Field, to give the Channel 5 news crew time to set up outside the Justice Center.

"As we turned into the jail, floodlights blasted into the back seat," he writes. "After a career spent in politics, I knew what that meant immediately, and I became totally catatonic."

Russo spent three days in jail before someone paid a bondsman $15,000 to let him out. He still doesn't know who. His old friend Friedman found him an attorney and wrote a glowing letter of support to the judge. But outside, the nightmare continued. Channel 5 did a special report on him.

For the first time, Russo admitted to friends and family that he was bisexual. He found a little solace in the unburdening of that secret, in the psychotherapy sessions and happy pills. He says he was struggling to understand himself, and how he'd sunk to the level of rationalizing the urge to have sex with a child. Discussing that period, he sometimes comes across as detached from what he (almost) did, and other times as acutely aware.

"When you're sexually soliciting underage people online, you're not thinking rationally," he says. "You just don't care anymore. Fuck it. In the clear light of day, I can't believe I was about to do this to someone. I was so glad I didn't hurt anyone. But that doesn't make it less wrong."

As the court case dragged on, he began to realize the effect a sex crime has on a career in politics. No one wanted to hire him.

And then the phone rang and on the other end was an aspiring young politician named Tim Ryan.

RUSSO RAN THE Dems' coordinated campaign in New Hampshire in 1998. He was looking for a volunteer with a little enthusiasm to turn a Democratic state senate candidate into a legitimate competitor for the seat. And in walked Ryan, a law student at Franklin Pierce. He told Ryan to get the candidate out on the roads, holding his own signs, every day until the election.

Rubbing elbows: With CNN's Christiane Amanpour.

"Thanks to Tim Ryan, [that candidate went] from not being on the ballot in August, to losing by five, count 'em, five votes in November."

When Ryan called Russo in 2001, he was the one looking for an enthusiastic man to join his team. At the time, Ryan was an Ohio state senator. The US congressman from Youngstown, Jim Traficant, was about to go to prison, and Ryan wanted Russo's help to run for Traficant's seat in the primary.

They met at Bob Evan's in Solon to work out the details. According to Russo, that's when Ryan found out about his arrest. "I need you, we'll work something out," Russo claims Ryan told him.

In order to keep Russo's name off the campaign's employee list, Russo says, Ryan paid him through a video production company run by a friend of Ryan's. Russo was paid around $2,000, for "editing" (he sat next to the editing machine and explained how a few campaign commercials should be designed). Russo claims what he was really being paid for was the political consulting he provided Ryan - specifically how to spin the media after Tom Sawyer, Ryan's Democratic opponent in the primary, leaked info about an illegal loan Ryan had received from a friend. During the campaign, while his court case continued in Cleveland, Russo lived at Ryan's mother's house near Youngstown and occasionally crashed at Ryan's apartment in town.

Ryan won the primary by 17 points, in 2002. He was often seen on the side of the road, holding his own signs. In August of that year, Russo pled guilty to importuning, a fifth-degree felony. The judge let him go with 100 hours of community service, a $500 donation to Cops & Kids, and a year of probation, which was quickly reduced to four months after his probation officer noticed he didn't fit in with the normal clientele.

Ryan went on to win the general election. But there was no job offer for Russo. The former consultant was even cut out of a documentary about the campaign. It wouldn't be the last time a candidate used Russo for his knowledge of politics the way men once used him for sex.

"They pay me to do the dirty work and then turn me loose," says Russo. "It's brutal in its quickness."

The Free Times attempted to contact Congressman Ryan for this story. A spokesman would speak only off the record and implied that he was afraid of what Russo might do if he spoke negatively about him. It's unclear if the congressman was ever alerted to our requests.

Russo has continued psychotherapy to this day. The counseling sessions came in handy when The Plain Dealer reminded Cleveland of his conviction in 2006.

In 2005, Ohio bloggers were being noticed by candidates seeking endorsements. Russo realized he could use his political experience to bring a new level of criticism to the blogosphere.

In November 2005, he started BuckeyePolitics.net, which was funded by Gerardo Orlando of Bullz-Eye.com, a popular online men's site. Russo was earning $2,400 a month, and thought he was getting his life back on track. Then, he introduced himself to Sherrod Brown and all hell broke loose.

Russo had been very critical of Brown on his blog. After tracing anonymous posts threatening legal action back to the Brown campaign's IP address, Russo contacted AFL-CIO bigwig John Ryan, a Brown supporter and confidant, and told him to have Brown instruct his volunteers to lay off. When he saw Brown at the Ohio Democratic Party's Christmas party, he couldn't resist the urge to introduce himself.

Their encounter quickly morphed into the stuff of legend. The number of self-proclaimed witnesses has become impossibly large. Some even claimed to have seen Brown's wife, Plain Dealer columnist Connie Schultz, spit on Russo, which is odd, because that, at least, never happened.

"I put my hand out and it was like BOOM!" says Russo. "He was waving his hands all around, and he started to yell at me. "How dare you! Is this because I didn't hire you 10 years ago?' I was stunned. Here was a sitting congressman yelling at me in front of a room full of people. And then he sees his wife and says, "Connie! Connie! Here's that asshole, Russo!' And then she starts yelling at me. And I knew she read my blog. She reads blogs all day long. We knew her IP address. And that's when I lost it. "You got a lot of fucking nerve,' I said. "How dare you insult my integrity.' I was fuck, fuck, fuck. When I get angry, the fucks come flying out of my mouth. I just went over to shake the guy's hand."

"I never yelled," explains Schultz. "When I get upset, I get quiet. I don't pay attention to Tim Russo. I don't know why he's been so nasty about me [he refers to her as "Pulitzer'] and my husband. I'm not anti-blog, I'm anti-propaganda, anti-lies."

Whatever really happened at that party between Russo and Brown, it was the beginning of the end for his paid blogging job.

Russo at the 1996 Clinton inauguration party.

The first hit came from another blogger named Cindy Zawadzki, who wrote on HeightsMom.com ("A Moms Perspective on Politics, News, and Events, Culture, Grassroots Politics, Attachment Parenting, and Family Life in Ohio"). In early 2006, she linked to Russo's criminal case docket in a post titled: "Hypocrisy, Thy Name is Russo."

Then someone faxed his record to producers at WCPN - while Russo was on the air, the first installment of what was supposed to be a weekly gig on Dan Moulthrop's morning show. Russo says Mark Smukler, the station's director of content, showed him the fax and told him he wasn't welcome back. (Smukler did not respond to a request to comment. He has never revealed the source of the fax.)

That summer, when Russo and other bloggers learned that Barack Obama was scheduled to appear at the annual ODP dinner, they attempted to get comp tickets to the event. When the party bosses told them that they were not considered journalists, Russo - then blogging as DemocracyGuy - posted an open letter to Obama's camp. A staff member for Obama's campaign contacted the bloggers within hours of the post; not only could they go for free, they could sit at Obama's table.

But the next morning, Obama's campaign contacted Russo again. He was told that they had conducted a routine background check, but he believes whoever tipped off WCPN also alerted Obama's staff to his record. His ticket was given to HeightsMom, who later posted a picture of her and Obama.

On June 6, The Plain Dealer published short bios on influential local bloggers. Here's Russo's: "Clever and insightful, but has the sharpest tongue in the blogosphere; trying to rebuild credibility lost when he was convicted of importuning in an Internet sex sting." It seemed an odd thing to include; Russo wasn't exactly writing kids' books, after all. Russo suspected that Schultz had played a role. She denies that, and in fact was on leave at the time due to her involvement with her husband's campaign for Senate.

Mark Naymik, who wrote the story, also says she had no influence. "My job was to do what a reporter does," he says. "We ran checks on the others, too. Do I want to write a story and have the Free Times come out next week and talk about how we didn't report on this? No. Ultimately, it was my editor [Jean Dubail]'s decision. I thought it relevant. What's written is a very benign version of what really happened. [Schultz and I] weren't talking. But he hasn't let go of this conspiracy. I do wish him well. Clearly, it's a painful issue for him."

A day later, Russo stopped blogging and retreated back to his parents' home and psychotherapy.

IN 2007, RUSSO started posting occasionally on BuckeyeStateBlog. Conservative wonks with their own sites targeted him repeatedly, wildly exaggerating his past. Slowly, he realized the only way to deal with it was to tell the whole story and get it out there and let people make up their own minds.

"He's got a brilliant mind for this," says a blogger who is hesitant to be publicly linked to Russo. "He has a way of forming questions that generate emotional responses. Take abortion. When he interviews Republicans he'll ask up front, "Is abortion murder?' And he'll get them to say, "Yes.' Later, he'll come back to this and ask them what sort of penalties they would recommend for women who have abortions. Would the sentence be like a traffic ticket or could they be executed, like other murderers? Then, he'll sit there and watch the guy squirm."

Eric Vessels of Plunderbund.com started off as a Russo critic but became a friend. "I made the decision to support him publicly, at first, because this conviction was five years old," says Vessels. "Then the more people threw crap at him, the more emboldened I became on that stance. The things they don't like about him are what makes him a great blogger - he's aggressive, he's not apologetic, and he's not into dialogue. Tim is incredibly knowledgeable, a hella smart guy and a great writer. He deserves to have his political opinions out there. How long do you keep a guy from not participating in society? But everyone's scared of him, because of what he knows about people in power. There are things that people don't want known that Tim knows."

Russo's new venture, BloggerInterrupted, went online in April. You can find there all the sordid details about his teenage sexual trysts (yes, we left some stuff out), mixed with commentary on national politics and breaking news about local politicians. He was even making some money at it until the advertising company abruptly pulled out. He suspects someone faxed them his history. Still, traffic is picking up and most of the feedback is friendly. As a commentator Russo is as blunt as ever - but either doesn't accept or doesn't care that many will never forget his past.

When Russo blasted Plain Dealer columnist Phillip Morris' recent piece on the Azerbaijan cultural garden in Rockefeller Park (Azerbaijan is a dictatorship), Morris sent Tim this e-mail:

Tim, I didn't realize you were blogging. Thanks for the note and the link. But given your history involving young men under the age of consent, it would seem advisable that you refrain from even commenting on the effort of boys to advance this city. I once considered you a fairly remarkable individual until, well, you know....Best of luck in your recovery. — Phil

Tim still lives in his parents' house near Berea. He's looking for work to supplement his blogging. He was recently turned down for a job managing a pizza parlor, so anything will do for now. "If this doesn't work, I guess I'll mow lawns at a golf course," he says. "At least I'll get free golf."

If nothing else, he seems to have scaled back his expectations. "In the end," he concedes at one point, "it's my fault I'm where I am today."

But during an interview at a brewery in Berea, Russo seems hopeful. He talks excitedly about local political scuttlebutt and his goals for this new project. Behind him, etched into the stone fireplace, is a quote by Theodore Roosevelt: "Dare mighty things." It's probably just a coincidence.