These Bucks County locals got naked to get you to vote

Robin Robinson has dressed up like a hot dog, made dirty jokes in a grocery store, shaken her hips, and tossed a french fry at her husband’s grave in front of the camera for her online following of nearly 2 million. But recently she had a first: posing for the camera in nothing but her spanx.

In the Vote Naked Bucks County video ad, Robinson can be seen wearing pearl earrings along with matching bright red lipstick and bold hexagonal glasses to match. Off camera is her flesh-toned shapewear, giving the appearance that she’s wearing only her birthday suit. She reaches into a refrigerator, shoulders bare, surrounded by kitchen essentials, and says to the camera with a grin: “This year there is no reason to get dressed to vote. You can vote naked.”

The ad, paid for by the Turn Bucks Blue political action committee and produced by Blue Nation Strategies, tries to send a clear message to potential Bucks voters: Vote by mail. It’s easy. Bucks County is the only purple collar-county outside Philadelphia, and now, for the first time in a decade and a half, the only one where registered Republicans outnumber Democrats. The Philadelphia suburbs were critical for President Joe Biden’s 2020 win, and any shift can have national implications.

Robinson, the former Bucks County Recorder of Deeds, is an internet celebrity who talks about grief through comedy rooted in her husband Mark Rosenthal’s 2010 death, with their two children Sam Rosenthal, 31, and Emma Rosenthal, 28, under the handle itstherosenthals. (Robinson previously went by Rosenthal but now goes by her maiden name.)

In the video, she wasn’t talking about sending in a naked ballot (don’t do that!) but rather voting from home, naked. (Naked ballots are faulty mail ballots that aren’t enclosed in the required provided secrecy envelope in Pennsylvania.)

» READ MORE: How to vote in Pennsylvania this election with president, Senate, and more on the ballot

In the flagship video ad, local theater extraordinaire John Augustine also appears to be nude as he tells viewers to head to BucksVotes.org to apply to vote by mail, which goes to a webpage on the Bucks County Democratic Committee website. The eye-catching ad, which appears on streaming platforms like Hulu and Roku, and similar digital display ads that appear online, features a cast of locals who were willing to push the envelope for democracy, including Kevin Aster Young, Ari Spectorman, Nastasha Raisley, and Sarah Harrison.

They were recruited by Bonnie Chang, chair of Turn Bucks Blue, who connected with Blue Nation Strategies in June about the idea when Democrats were feeling discouraged by the lack of enthusiasm behind Biden. Blue Nation had been pitching the idea to candidates for a couple of years, and nobody wanted to touch it ― but the out-of-the-box skit was just the kind of upbeat message Chang was looking for.

“We thought, we want to do something positive, you know, we don’t want to pile on this doom and gloom,” Chang said. “And we didn’t want to pile on this ‘You got to save democracy’ — that kind of lecturing.”

Chang said her team is targeting roughly 50,000 voters in the swing county, primarily Democrats who are not likely to vote.

The ad will run for six weeks total, up until the Oct. 29 deadline to request a mail ballot, and early data showed that 70% of people are watching the 15 and 30-second versions of the ad in their entirety, Chang said.

“When we say ‘naked,’ people actually pay attention,” she said. “Like, oh, what’s that?”

The ad is particularly eye-catching with the camera-ready charisma of Robinson, who has 1.5 million TikTok followers and 457,000 Instagram followers. But she doesn’t post about politics on her page, and hasn’t promoted the ad to her fans since Instagram took down a photo of Robinson in her spanx on set, triggering a review of her other posts.

But she said she’s proud of the ad, and had no qualms about baring her body for democracy.

“If they think this is a way that we can help get out the vote and get people to mail their mail-in ballots in, I’m all for it,” she said.