“I Got a Crush … on Obama,” the viral music video that exploded onto the Web last week with a risque beauty crooning her adoration for Sen. Barack Obama, has been watched by roughly 20 million people on YouTube, CNN, ABC, MSNBC and at its original home, barelypolitical.com.
The guy behind this phenomenon is Ben Relles, a 32-year-old New York advertising executive at Agency.com, who dreamed up the idea while walking home from work one day and co-wrote the song. What’s not as well known about Relles is that he was born in Madison and lived here for six years before moving to Philadelphia, then returned here for college, getting an undergraduate degree from UW-Madison in 1997.