It was 4 a.m. Brian Camenker, 53, a computer programmer, sat at his kitchen table in Newton, Mass., hunched over his Toshiba laptop. Strewn around him were papers detailing former governor Mitt Romney's alleged ties to gay youth conferences, gay judges and abortion-rights activists.
The documents, mostly printouts of news stories, represented weeks of work by Camenker and a few volunteers who had searched the Internet for material to disprove Romney's assertions that he is a conservative. Now, the results glowed on the screen in front of him, compiled into a 10,000-word dossier, "The Mitt Romney Deception."
Camenker e-mailed the report to six conservative activists and hopped a plane for Florida to see his mother for Thanksgiving. The activists forwarded the report to more activists. Within weeks, the report had reached thousands of conservative activists nationwide, sparked arguments on blogs, and been picked up by The Washington Times, National Review Online, and Fox News.
Delighted, Camenker is preparing to release a second report this week, "The Mitt Romney Deception Volume II," which he said links Romney to policies supporting adoption by gay couples.
The burst of attention has catapulted Camenker, a political agitator who has long protested gay rights in Massachusetts, into unlikely prominence in the nascent Republican presidential race. It has also underscored the startling power of the Internet to upset established political campaigns.
Some conservatives say Camenker's report, spiked with references to gay sex, has seriously damaged Romney's effort to woo conservative voters. Others dismiss the report as a joke. But Romney is not laughing. Earlier this month, he fired back with a press release titled "Meet the Real Brian Camenker," which includes quotes from Camenker saying he was once a social liberal and a link to Camenker's appearance on "The Daily Show," where he was mocked by the comedian Ed Helms.
Camenker is relishing the attention. He said he may follow Romney in New Hampshire, dogging him in that primary state. The report has given him a platform he never expected.
"People tell me over and over again that this has basically sunk the Romney campaign," Camenker said, laughing during a recent interview at a Waltham coffee shop. "It was like nothing I've ever seen. It was this tidal wave."
Sinking the Romney campaign is an overstatement. But some Romney supporters are anguished by the report and dismayed by Romney's response. One blogger, Matt Lewis, wrote a posting on townhall.com, titled, "Don't hit a gadfly with a jackhammer," that questioned Romney's press release.
"If Camenker is so irreluvant (sic), then why is Romney trying to take him down?" Lewis wrote. "Why not let someone else take down Camenker ... Get a surrogate, for crying out loud, Governor Romney, but don't dirty your hands on this man."
Camenker, who called the press release "puerile," laughed when he saw the link to his "Daily Show" appearance, and the quote about him being a former liberal, lifted from an article he wrote in 1996 for The Jewish Advocate, titled, "How a Good Jewish Boy Joined the Religious Right."
"Oh, man, this is really a riot," Camenker said. "It's adolescent for him to react that way — the guy is running for president of the United States."
Romney's aides say they had no choice but to delve into the Camenker archives and respond.
"Any time there's a distortion of the facts, and any time people start slinging around attacks against the governor that are not consistent at all with the record, it's important we respond and set the record straight," said Kevin Madden, a Romney spokesman.
Camenker began protesting what he calls "the homosexual agenda" in 1992, when a neighbor showed him a teaching guide for Newton sixth-graders that contained what he called disgusting descriptions of gay sex.
Over the last decade, he has tried to fight back, he says, distributing an audiotape of a state-sanctioned gay youth conference at Tufts University, which included graphic discussion of sex. The firestorm that ensued resulted in the firing of the two state Department of Education employees who took part. He helped push through legislation that requires schools to notify parents about sex education curricula. And he forced Macy's in Downtown Crossing to take down a window display featuring two male mannequins, one with a rainbow flag around its waist. In his hometown, he organized a petition to oppose domestic partnership benefits and was booted from Newton North High School for trying to sit in on a student gay-rights celebration.
Romney first came into his sights in 1994, he said, when Romney ran for the Senate as a supporter of abortion rights and gay rights. Camenker has met Romney only twice, he said, shaking hands with him in 1994 and 2002. And he said he believes he voted for Romney in 1994 and 2002, because he liked the Democrats even less.
"Romney is a RINO, a Republican in name only," Camenker said. "He's Bill Weld's best buddy."
A few conservative allies began pressuring him to compile "The Mitt Romney Deception" last fall, when the former governor began campaigning as a conservative aspirant for the White House in 2008.
In addition to quoting Romney from his Senate campaign, the report excavates several little-known items. One is a photograph of a pink flier that Romney aides distributed at a gay pride march in Boston in 2002. "Mitt and Kerry wish you a great Pride Weekend!" the flier states. "All citizens deserve equal rights, regardless of their sexual preference."
Another item quotes Kathleen Henry, chairwoman of the Governor's Commission on Gay and Lesbian Youth, saying Romney proposed doubling the commission's budget in fiscal year 2006, to $250,000. "It's really huge," said Henry, quoted in a Globe story. "It says to us clearly that he gets the service for what it really is."
Conservatives responded instantly.
"Through phone conservations and e-mail, it's making its rounds and there is a growing tide of concern within pro-family organizations that the governor has some real explaining to do," said J. Matt Barber, policy director for cultural issues at Concerned Women for America.
The conservatives are not the only ones taking notice. Camenker's usual targets on the left are enjoying the spectacle of the unrelenting activist trying to derail the campaign of a politician they dislike.
"I love it," said Marc Solomon, campaign director for the gay rights group MassEquality. "It's sort of ironic, but I think that in this case, Brian Camenker actually has a point, and I think that's the first time I've ever said that. He is highlighting Romney's just total political expediency on issues related to gays and lesbians."
Romney supporters blast the report's central contention that Romney is not a true conservative. David French, a Tennessee lawyer, wrote a lengthy rebuttal on his Web site, Evangelicals for Mitt, calling the assertions "unfair and unfortunately misguided attacks against a man who stood — with real integrity — against some of the worst excesses of the cultural left."
"Camenker's arguments are at about 14 minutes and 59 seconds of fame right now," French said in a phone interview.
Romney responded to the report, during a recent tour of a gun show in Orlando.
"You know, it's the nature of politics to try and go back into ancient history and say, 'Look what happened here, and look what he said there,"' Romney said. "People can look at my record as governor, and they can see that, with regard for instance to traditional marriage, I have been as staunch a defender as you'll find anywhere in the country."
Camenker said he called a few prominent conservatives, including the Rev. Louis P. Sheldon, chairman of the Traditional Values Coalition, to alert them to the report. But he has mostly e-mailed it to bloggers and activists, and let it spread on its own.
He acknowledges many conservatives have rebuffed him, saying, "Brian, if we don't have Romney, we'll have McCain or Giuliani, and they're worse." The references are to Senator John McCain of Arizona and former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani, who have taken moderate stands on some social issues.
But Camenker said, "All we're doing is spreading the truth."
"My goal is that the next president of the United States be a conservative," he said.
Romney doesn't pass the test, he said. In a reference to the liberal gay state senator from Cambridge, Camenker said: "How's (Romney) going to stand up to the president of Iran if Jarrett Barrios scares him?"
E-mail: mlevenson@globe.com.