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JonathanBydlak
03-13-2008, 11:10 PM
As some of you may know, I am no longer officially with the Ron Paul campaign as of March 14th. It's been my observation that at times there has been a disconnect in communication between the campaign and grassroots supporters, and so I thought that now that I am no longer with the campaign, I can do the most good by taking some time to answer any questions that people may have regarding the campaign. I'd like to do everything I can to unite everyone dedicated to the ideals of liberty, and to clarify any misperceptions that may have existed or still exist amongst all of us.

That said, I am not speaking in the capacity as a representative of the campaign, and nothing I say should be taken as such. I'm not here to speak negatively of any members of official staff, grassroots supporters, or anyone else who has given a great deal of time, money, and effort helping Ron Paul earn the Republican nomination. But I am perfectly willing to share parts of my experience working on the campaign, as well as answer any questions that people may have about campaign-related issues, past or present. I know that at times some supporters have been critical of me personally, and I welcome any comments to that regard, so long as they are civil and substantive.

To share one comment up front... I never cease to be amazed by the effort and dedication of people both inside and outside of the campaign to Ron Paul, and all of the ideas by which we are united. It's been a source of frustration for me at times to see us tearing at each other, because while there's a place for constructive criticism, in my opinion we'd be much better off focusing on how to defeat other candidates and further this great movement we've started. After all, while we may have our differences or sources of discontent, we're all working for the same goal.

So that said, let me be as much of a resource to you as I can!

Jonathan

OptionsTrader
03-13-2008, 11:16 PM
Thanks Jonathan. I hope some agent provocateurs don't hijack this thread and start a flame war and cause trouble.

I thank you for your hard work.

Zera
03-13-2008, 11:16 PM
Two things:

1. Why were you let go? (You don't have to answer it if you don't feel comfortable doing so.)

2. How aware is Paul of our efforts in getting all of our supporters to become delegates? Does he believe we have a chance?

Melissa
03-13-2008, 11:16 PM
Hi and weclome to the forums they may be a bit fiesty here but almost all here love freedom and liberty so they are on the same page, they just all have many ways of getting there

Banana
03-13-2008, 11:16 PM
No questions here, but wanted to say *Thank You* for the work and courage to come over here to help us sort out the hubris. :)

mavtek
03-13-2008, 11:17 PM
I'd just like to say you seemed to have done a respectful job at your position. There's not much 1 man can do. To speak of hindsight is to only slight those who worked very hard. We have all learned a great deal from this campaign.

I have learned to not wait for instruction or help, just do.

OptionsTrader
03-13-2008, 11:17 PM
Does the campaign still have the capacity to take in money and run this ad on television? The video is creating a lot of excitement.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3MLTvYBQy0

http://www.HighTidePromo.com

IPSecure
03-13-2008, 11:20 PM
Why the disconnect between Headquarters and GrassRoots?

I Mean: "What Is Going On Here"?

NerveShocker
03-13-2008, 11:23 PM
Well since it appears you have plenty of questions to answer already I just want to thank you for your contribution. It's like G. Edward Griffen said the people at the top are the ones that they always try to discredit and damage.

amy31416
03-13-2008, 11:24 PM
Welcome and I'm very interested to hear what you have to say.

Kotin
03-13-2008, 11:26 PM
is there a plan b?

an indie run? a Ron Paul endorsed Candidate? anything?

JonathanBydlak
03-13-2008, 11:28 PM
Two things:

1. Why were you let go? (You don't have to answer it if you don't feel comfortable doing so.)

2. How aware is Paul of our efforts in getting all of our supporters to become delegates? Does he believe we have a chance?

I'd be happy to answer both of these questions.

First, as you know, the campaign is trying to stay lean and keep costs as low as possible. Whether people decide to give to the campaign at this point will have little to do with any actions of a "fundraising director." But regardless of what happens from this point forward in the campaign, I encourage everyone to continue giving. There are great things that will come out of this campaign, and the funds that people give really do make it all possible. Every individual will have to decide for himself or herself what the best way to spend their money is, and that may not be giving to he "official campaign." But know that a lot of smart people are working very hard to use donations as efficiently as we know how.

As for me personally, I believe that I gave all I could to the campaign, and it was time for me to move on to other things.

Second, Dr. Paul is very aware of the efforts going on to get as many delegates as possible. I don't believe he would be staying the race if he did not believe that these were worthwhile goals. I can't really speak to the degree that Dr. Paul thinks it is realistic to win the nomination, as the only commentary I've heard from him on this matter is the same thing that you all have heard in his YouTube videos. But I'd add this comment, regardless of what Dr. Paul thinks: Talking to people first-hand is the most effective way of influencing people possible. Whether that takes place on the floor of the convention, or in a conversation with your neighbor over your fence, it's extremely worthwhile. So I wouldn't place so much emphasis on what Dr. Paul or the campaign is doing... if you truly believe in this movement, then you owe it to yourself and everyone else to get the word out -- continuously -- in any way that you can. That may be through serving as delegates to the convention, or it may be calling up your uncle who doesn't quite "get" what we're about just yet. As Dr. Paul said, revolutions do not happen overnight.

NerveShocker
03-13-2008, 11:33 PM
is there a plan b?

an indie run? a Ron Paul endorsed Candidate? anything?

Ron Paul has endorsed several candidates, Murray Sabrin is one for example. The movement moves on this presidential run is nowhere near the end, just the beginning. Too many people have been awakened now (thanks a lot to Ron Paul) to stop now.. it can only grow. ;)

JonathanBydlak
03-13-2008, 11:33 PM
I'd just like to say you seemed to have done a respectful job at your position. There's not much 1 man can do. To speak of hindsight is to only slight those who worked very hard. We have all learned a great deal from this campaign.

I have learned to not wait for instruction or help, just do.

This is a great take away... we all believe in the powers of decentralization, and it makes sense to do as much as we can before being told to do so. That said, I think it's smart to remember that we should listen to instructions when they come. None of us know everything, but it's important to keep an open mind and take the advice of those who are in a position to know more.

As an example, canvassing is something of critical importance, and in my opinion, trumps the benefits of things like sign waves. I wish we had invested more into getting the word out about canvassing as soon as possible. I consider it a great failing of me personally, and everyone else who was in a position to know, that we didn't stress to supporters the importance of winning their precinct.

That said, it's still important to use the tools of the precinct leader program as much as possible. This is an ongoing process, and I encourage everyone to take the instructions the campaign has given, and run with them. We all can have a massive amount of influence in our area.

https://voters.ronpaul2008.com

JonathanBydlak
03-13-2008, 11:38 PM
Does the campaign still have the capacity to take in money and run this ad on television? The video is creating a lot of excitement.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3MLTvYBQy0

http://www.HighTidePromo.com

The campaign definitely still has the capacity to take in money, and is definitely doing so.

As far as running a particular ad, I can't really comment about the current financial situation of the campaign... your best bet to find out that answer is to look in the latest FEC reports.

One thing I would note is to make a distinction between what looks good on YouTube and what looks good on TV. I know that there has been a lot of commentary on the quality of the campaign's ads, and while some of it has definitely been warranted, much of it has not. The mindset that people take when watching TV is very different than when they are actively searching for intellectual content online. It's very difficult to make a good 30 second ad (not to mention a 1 minute ad, which often runs 3x as expensive as 30 second ads). Keep that in mind when watcing videos like this. How will your 65 year old father or grandfather react? What about the 40 year old soccer mom? And the 21 year old college student? And how will all of these people react when they see the ad in the middle of their favorite talk show, sitcom, or the nightly news?

hillbilly123069
03-13-2008, 11:39 PM
the campaign was trying to impede it?

NoxTwilight
03-13-2008, 11:39 PM
I don't have any specific questions although I will pay close attention to this thread and any others you participate in for your insights and I hope some guidance and suggestions. I think you will be an asset to us and hope that you will continue to share our work now and in the future.

I have a feeling that we will need people like you after the convention especially.

Welcome and thanks!

amy31416
03-13-2008, 11:40 PM
We in the grassroots need some leadership, and regardless of your failings, we need someone who has a voice, patience, decisiveness and motivation to act. We likely won't pay you, but I'm very intrigued with what you have to offer.


This is a great take away... we all believe in the powers of decentralization, and it makes sense to do as much as we can before being told to do so. That said, I think it's smart to remember that we should listen to instructions when they come. None of us know everything, but it's important to keep an open mind and take the advice of those who are in a position to know more.

As an example, canvassing is something of critical importance, and in my opinion, trumps the benefits of things like sign waves. I wish we had invested more into getting the word out about canvassing as soon as possible. I consider it a great failing of me personally, and everyone else who was in a position to know, that we didn't stress to supporters the importance of winning their precinct.

That said, it's still important to use the tools of the precinct leader program as much as possible. This is an ongoing process, and I encourage everyone to take the instructions the campaign has given, and run with them. We all can have a massive amount of influence in our area.

https://voters.ronpaul2008.com

JonathanBydlak
03-13-2008, 11:42 PM
Why the disconnect between Headquarters and GrassRoots?

I Mean: "What Is Going On Here"?

Well, my personal feeling is that it's a combination of things. On HQ's side, I think there's been so much that's gone on, that it's hard to communicate every decision perfectly to supporters. And of course, when you do communicate something, there ends up being another 20,000 questions that it raises.

On the grassroots side, I think there have been times when HQ has communicated things very clearly, but people have let negative perceptions get in the way of objectively assessing the advice. Everyone has their own motivations, and it's hard to trust a "distant" group of people whom many of you have never met. I think a lot of times it comes down to a belief that individuals know better than groups in positions of leadership.

I personally prescribe to that philosophy too, but I still think it's important for both sides to listen to and try to understand the feedback that the other is providing.

silverhandorder
03-13-2008, 11:44 PM
Wow welcome :D I hope you stay around. Fun times.

OptionsTrader
03-13-2008, 11:47 PM
One thing I would note is to make a distinction between what looks good on YouTube and what looks good on TV.

I agree that is a good point. I hope he at least sees the ad. It is quite well made and I would guess hundreds of hours were spent in production.

Hook
03-13-2008, 11:49 PM
Why no national ads like all the other candidates? How come we didn't hire a big-name campaign director that had experience and inside knowledge of how to get the media to cover the campaign?

I think that if we saw the same level of ads as the other candidates, you would have easily seen twice the donations, because people would have thought their money was well spent.

Just my $.02

JonathanBydlak
03-13-2008, 11:51 PM
is there a plan b?

an indie run? a Ron Paul endorsed Candidate? anything?

Ron will not run as an independent. Sometimes I wish he had snapped back angrily at reporters and made it 100% clear early on that he never would do so. But he simply will not, and it's probably not the best thing for the movement.

I think of it this way. On the one hand, I would love to see Ron run independent. I think in an election between a warmonger (McCain) and another warmonger (Clinton) or a false-peacenik (Obama), Ron would stand out so much. But it's terribly hard to run indy. On top of getting on the ballot, the bigger problem is getting the press and the public to take you seriously and think you have a chance of winning. If we couldn't do that with Ron running as a Republican, what makes us think they would if he ran as an independent?

OVer the long term, the best thing is to take back the Republican party apparatus. And as we know, this is already going on all around the country. Get out an take part in your local Republican party meetings. If you're not a delegate yet, take the necessary steps to be one. Again, like Ron said, none of this will happen overnight. This revolution will all come down to how much dedication we all have to it, both "HQ" and grassroots supporters. I know sometimes people have said "HQ just relies on the grassroots to do everything." But when you don't have the party apparatus in your hip pocket, victory has to come from the bottom up. Don't get discouraged... just work harder.

As far as endorsements of other candidates... Ron has endorsed Murray Sabrin, and I don't know about others. My hope is that when the current phase of the campaign winds down, an organization will spring up that will recruit liberty-oriented candidates, and fund and work hard to get them elected. Keep in mind that we have that to look forward to when this campaign ends.

JS4Pat
03-13-2008, 11:51 PM
Why the disconnect between Headquarters and GrassRoots?

I Mean: "What Is Going On Here"?

Same questions.

Flirple
03-13-2008, 11:52 PM
Thanks so much for starting this thread.

Specifically, what prevented someone in the campaign from doing this all along? I think that having an "ask HQ thread" is specifically what so many of us would have liked from the start and would have saved us so much time. Specifically, what restrictions (McCain Fiengold etc.) prevented you from directly communicating with us on these message boards? Or was there another reason (aside from legal) that we all had to independently try to email or call HQ resulting in inefficient and ineffective redundant use of our time (as well as yours) to get info?

JonathanBydlak
03-13-2008, 11:53 PM
the campaign was trying to impede it?

Nope, not a chance. Sure, there were definitely decisions along the way that I would argue were detrimental to our end goals. And sure, there were people who worked harder and were more dedicated than others. But a "plant" or someone along those lines? Not as far as I could see. There were no two people more dedicated to Ron Paul than Kent Snyder and Lew Moore. I'd focus any criticisms on them on the decisions that were made, rather than their characters or intentions.

Hook
03-13-2008, 11:54 PM
Oh, and why didn't HQ dedicate someone whose only job was to keep the grassroots informed? Daily meetups on this forum would have dispelled much anger towards HQ and probably would have easily paid for the salary of the person by increased donations.

Most of the other campaigns had daily email updates and extensive grassroots coordinators.

JonathanBydlak
03-13-2008, 11:55 PM
We in the grassroots need some leadership, and regardless of your failings, we need someone who has a voice, patience, decisiveness and motivation to act. We likely won't pay you, but I'm very intrigued with what you have to offer.

haha, well, I like to think I have something to offer. I plan on doing all I can, regardless of whether that's in some "official" post-campaign capacity or not...

JonathanBydlak
03-13-2008, 11:56 PM
I agree that is a good point. I hope he at least sees the ad. It is quite well made and I would guess hundreds of hours were spent in production.

If I had a nickel for everytime I heard that! :D

Zera
03-13-2008, 11:59 PM
Ron will not run as an independent. Sometimes I wish he had snapped back angrily at reporters and made it 100% clear early on that he never would do so. But he simply will not, and it's probably not the best thing for the movement.

I think of it this way. On the one hand, I would love to see Ron run independent. I think in an election between a warmonger (McCain) and another warmonger (Clinton) or a false-peacenik (Obama), Ron would stand out so much. But it's terribly hard to run indy. On top of getting on the ballot, the bigger problem is getting the press and the public to take you seriously and think you have a chance of winning. If we couldn't do that with Ron running as a Republican, what makes us think they would if he ran as an independent?

OVer the long term, the best thing is to take back the Republican party apparatus. And as we know, this is already going on all around the country. Get out an take part in your local Republican party meetings. If you're not a delegate yet, take the necessary steps to be one. Again, like Ron said, none of this will happen overnight. This revolution will all come down to how much dedication we all have to it, both "HQ" and grassroots supporters. I know sometimes people have said "HQ just relies on the grassroots to do everything." But when you don't have the party apparatus in your hip pocket, victory has to come from the bottom up. Don't get discouraged... just work harder.

As far as endorsements of other candidates... Ron has endorsed Murray Sabrin, and I don't know about others. My hope is that when the current phase of the campaign winds down, an organization will spring up that will recruit liberty-oriented candidates, and fund and work hard to get them elected. Keep in mind that we have that to look forward to when this campaign ends.

*applauds*

Someone show this to Colecrowe so he stops spamming up the board.

OptionsTrader
03-14-2008, 12:02 AM
What do you think we can do if anything to get Ron to be taken seriously as a candidate in the television media? $6 million in a day wasn't enough 3 months ago, and today the whole television media is infatuated with the 3 heads on the same monster. The dollar is crashing as our candidate predicted, gold and oil are spiking as our candidate precited, I feel like I am living in a dream. If Obama had made these predictions they would be heralding him as the second coming of Jesus.

Besides becoming a delegate as I am, what in the hell can we do to get him to be taken seriously? It is 235 days until the election and we are probably about to go kill a million folks in Iran and I am pissed off...

Hook
03-14-2008, 12:03 AM
There were no two people more dedicated to Ron Paul than Kent Snyder and Lew Moore. I'd focus any criticisms on them on the decisions that were made, rather than their characters or intentions.

No one here has ever questioned the motivations and character of Moore and Synder. It is just that a lot of people got the impression that they were in way over their heads once some real money started coming in. It is like they never expected to get very far and were only planning on running an educational campaign. This is understandable, but once you realize you are in over your head sometimes it is better to find an experienced expert and let them take over.

Probably the most frustrating thing we encountered were all the times HQ didn't respond back to media requests.

JonathanBydlak
03-14-2008, 12:06 AM
Why no national ads like all the other candidates? How come we didn't hire a big-name campaign director that had experience and inside knowledge of how to get the media to cover the campaign?

I think that if we saw the same level of ads as the other candidates, you would have easily seen twice the donations, because people would have thought their money was well spent.

Just my $.02

Ooh, now we're getting into some red meat... haha. This one might take awhile.

1. National campaign ads. I think the reason this wasn't done is because it largely didn't make sense for a candidate like Ron. While we raised $20M in Q4, keep in mind how much the other candidates had spent before that. Mitt Romne spent MILLIONS to bring his name recognition up to snuff with the other candidates. Everyone knew Rudy from 9/11, they knew McCain from 2000, and while Huckabee was an unknown like Ron, his seemingly genuine personality infatuated the press. But many members of the press didn't care about Ron, and they didn't take him seriously. I don't believe that even people like Tucker, who gave Ron above-average face-time and believed strongly in Ron's message, ever thought he had a chance of winning. That said, with limited resources, you have to target them. And the campaign worked hard at targeting early primary states, while still organizing supporters everywhere else. But to throw money across the country would not have been smart (in my opinion), and I'd rather see more direct mail in New Hampshire than TV ads playing in New Mexico and Kentucky.

2. As far as a "big-name" campaign director... In my opinion, the campaign could have used someone who had significant experience with campaigning. But I say that not because there weren't people with that experience, but because ANY campaign could always use more. But my personal opinion is also that the difference such a person would have made would have been largely trivial. That's because, as I said earlier, there's no magic secret to how a staff can get the press to cover a candidate. In the end, the press didn't cover Ron Paul because they didn't like Ron Paul... not because the staff didn't do the needed job. If you want to understand why Ron didn't get coverage, your best starting place is to question how Ron presented his message, whether he could have done a better job, or whether the message is too opposed to the biases of the media. Sure, additional staff would have helped. But to focus criticisms there is to miss the broader point.

JonathanBydlak
03-14-2008, 12:11 AM
Thanks so much for starting this thread.

Specifically, what prevented someone in the campaign from doing this all along? I think that having an "ask HQ thread" is specifically what so many of us would have liked from the start and would have saved us so much time. Specifically, what restrictions (McCain Fiengold etc.) prevented you from directly communicating with us on these message boards? Or was there another reason (aside from legal) that we all had to independently try to email or call HQ resulting in inefficient and ineffective redundant use of our time (as well as yours) to get info?

Well, I'm not a legal expert by any means, so I don't know the degree to which this could have been done. But I do know that there are clauses that prevent "coordination" with unpaid individuals. If you get a good or service provided from someone, you need to compensate them fair market value. For example, when people said "you could just take ads from the grassroots for free!", what was missed is that we could not take them for free anymore than we could take a helicopter from a donor for free.

As I said in my initial post, we definitely needed to do a better job with communication, and in my opinion (I know others disagree), we failed. I personally didn't see us failing until too late, and it was because of others that I began to realize that. And remember, the campaign did add the Daily Dose with this goal in mind, and I think Dan McCarthy did a great job with it.

But one other thing I would add is that in many cases, we did provide tons of guidance. Maybe not directly from HQ, but certainly from field staff. And not to be too critical, but there were numerous cases where people didn't want to do the things "they were told." So the blame on communication goes all around here... it's a double edged sword, as best as I can tell.

JonathanBydlak
03-14-2008, 12:16 AM
What do you think we can do if anything to get Ron to be taken seriously as a candidate in the television media? $6 million in a day wasn't enough 3 months ago, and today the whole television media is infatuated with the 3 heads on the same monster. The dollar is crashing as our candidate predicted, gold and oil are spiking as our candidate precited, I feel like I am living in a dream. If Obama had made these predictions they would be heralding him as the second coming of Jesus.

Besides becoming a delegate as I am, what in the hell can we do to get him to be taken seriously? It is 235 days until the election and we are probably about to go kill a million folks in Iran and I am pissed off...

Well, if you want my honest opinion, I don't think there's much that "we" can do. I think it comes down to two things... what the media wants to cover, and shortcomings of Ron. The media wants news, plain and simple. Sure, there was bias against Ron, but that was minor next to the point that Ron wasn't attacking other candidates by saying controversial things (remember the one time Ron called out Huckabee's Christmas ad? We got news coverage everywhere because of that. Why? Because it was controversial.)

So, it's a sad indictment of our society when substance doesn't get you news coverage. But my personal opinion is knowing that, you have to play the game. And unfortuantely, Ron is too dignified to do that.

Hook
03-14-2008, 12:16 AM
If you want to understand why Ron didn't get coverage, your best starting place is to question how Ron presented his message, whether he could have done a better job, or whether the message is too opposed to the biases of the media. Sure, additional staff would have helped. But to focus criticisms there is to miss the broader point.

Yes, Dr. Paul could have made his message more understandable to the dunces in the media. Not sure that would have made CNN more amenable to the message though.

Well, it is all water under the bridge now.

What are the chances of Dr. Paul at least speaking at the GOP convention?

JonathanBydlak
03-14-2008, 12:22 AM
No one here has ever questioned the motivations and character of Moore and Synder. It is just that a lot of people got the impression that they were in way over their heads once some real money started coming in. It is like they never expected to get very far and were only planning on running an educational campaign. This is understandable, but once you realize you are in over your head sometimes it is better to find an experienced expert and let them take over.

Probably the most frustrating thing we encountered were all the times HQ didn't respond back to media requests.

Well, I think there may be some truth to this comment. But I would also add that if they didn't expect things to turn out this well, neither did Ron. In fact, I don't think ANYONE, inside or outside of the campaign did.

I can tell you that everyone on our staff wanted to win this race desperately. And we all still do. But adding an "expert" would not have solved anything. Remember that Ron himself has said numerous times that he saw this campaign as an educational campaign...

As far as not responding to media requests, two points... first, you're right that the campaign was too late formulating a 5 star media team. It should have been in place earlier, and I fault myself in retrospect, as well as others, for sort of seeing it as a problem, but not realizing its magnitude. But, I will also say that many of the criticisms that people raise in this regard are unfounded. By the end of November, we had a system in place to responding to important media calls. But again, we can't respond to every local newspaper and TV station. We were forced to pick and choose appearances that were most important, particularly because the media did not care about surrogates for Ron Paul like they did for a Hillary Clinton. That meant that Ron had to do all of these appearances, which was just impossible. Many of the criticisms of the media team were centered on less important media -- not that all media aren't important, but you still clearly have to get Ron in front of the biggest media audience as you can, given time constraints.

JonathanBydlak
03-14-2008, 12:23 AM
Yes, Dr. Paul could have made his message more understandable to the dunces in the media. Not sure that would have made CNN more amenable to the message though.

Well, it is all water under the bridge now.

What are the chances of Dr. Paul at least speaking at the GOP convention?

I don't know, but I have a hard time seeing that happen, only because Ron could never endorse John McCain's big government, interventionist message.

OptionsTrader
03-14-2008, 12:24 AM
I do not believe it is undignified to attack the other 3 vigorously. If that is what it takes to win, I wish he would do it.

Remaining dignified is noble in times of peace, but in times of war, not if it means the death of God knows how many brown people as George Carlin (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDkhzHQO7jY) likes to put it, by taking the high road.

I want to see the Ron Paul that told that Morton Downey Jr audience member to go on a diet...I want to see some fire and vigor. I know he's still got it in him, and I know he thinks the message is enough, but it isn't, sadly.

qh4dotcom
03-14-2008, 12:28 AM
Jonathan,

Does Dr. Paul plan to run again for President in 2012?

westmich4paul
03-14-2008, 12:30 AM
Hi Johnathan, I am glad you came on to answer some of the questions we the grassroots have had but never really seemed to get answers from the HQ. I want to thank you for all of your hard work. My question to you is probably one you have heard a thousand times over but I will ask again anyway. I realize that campaigning costs and that it costs alot of money. After the Nov 5th money-bomb success and again after the Boston Tea Party money-bombs success the campaign had ALOT more cash on hand than most of the other candidates including McCain and Huckabee by a wide margin. The media although never really friendly, after Nov 5th there seemed to be some real positives coming from the campaign media wise. We in MI had our primary on Jan 15th and McCain, Huckabee, and Romney were buzzing around this state speaking in small towns, large towns, putting on t.v. ads. Us Ron Paul supporters were getting our GOP people here going "is Ron coming to Grand Rapids? We would welcome a visit. We would be like were sure he will be here but no word from the HQ. Time past and it was is he coming? Well we do not know. Then to state directors and HQ people saying Ron will come if he sees you have enough organization and support. We did it and showed them we did. Then came the word like a week or so away from Jan 15th that nope he is not coming, leaving us with egg on our face in front of our local GOP who after his fundraising success started to actually give him a second look because at every GOP meeting we had we would double the number of Ron Paul supporters there, far surpasing any supporters from any other campaign. No Ron, No t.v. ads, little radio ads and 25 million sitting in the bank. This was not just isolated to MI as I heard this coming from several primary states. We also never recieved a campaign HQ in West Michigan although we were told to go look at them from which we could be successful precinct delegates. We did recieve much needed supplies about one week before primary day leaving us too little time to distribute it all out. Now mind you we had no money for a local HQ in Grand Rapids, but the night of the primary we had the money to hold a big party at some upscale hotel. There were alot of grassroots people that were just in shock at the way were being treated by the HQ. PLEASE, PLEASE, TELL ME what the hell we spent all that money on. Bacause watching McAIN AND ROMNEY AND hUCKABEE DO A FANTASTC JOB CAMPAIGNING HERE REALLY BLEW THE WIND OUT OF OUR SAILS.

ghemminger
03-14-2008, 12:34 AM
John,
Thanks for comming on here...We appreciate all that you folks did at HQ

Bladestunner316
03-14-2008, 12:35 AM
I have to ask. Was there ever a secret billionaire or millionaire?? :)

steph3n
03-14-2008, 12:36 AM
I have to ask. Was there ever a secret billionaire or millionaire?? :)

I think you know the answer to that one ;)

ghemminger
03-14-2008, 12:37 AM
Thanks for listening to us - were you ever on the grassroots conference calls - sorry if they got to heated - we were all just trying to help

Flirple
03-14-2008, 12:38 AM
As far as not responding to media requests, two points... first, you're right that the campaign was too late formulating a 5 star media team. It should have been in place earlier, and I fault myself in retrospect, as well as others, for sort of seeing it as a problem, but not realizing its magnitude. But, I will also say that many of the criticisms that people raise in this regard are unfounded. By the end of November, we had a system in place to responding to important media calls. But again, we can't respond to every local newspaper and TV station. We were forced to pick and choose appearances that were most important, particularly because the media did not care about surrogates for Ron Paul like they did for a Hillary Clinton. That meant that Ron had to do all of these appearances, which was just impossible. Many of the criticisms of the media team were centered on less important media -- not that all media aren't important, but you still clearly have to get Ron in front of the biggest media audience as you can, given time constraints.

I totally understand all this and often found myself defending HQ when people would criticize the media staff for not responding to interview requests for big interview opportunities. And I know you handled fundraising and not media, but it's really hard to understand when you consider how many times Ron was available to go on shows such as Alex Jones.

honkywill
03-14-2008, 12:46 AM
Is there any way you can describe the atmosphere/expectations around the office on November 4th? I think that would be interesting to hear.

Crickett
03-14-2008, 01:12 AM
Me too. I would like to know why the TV ads were so horrible when so much creative stuff was out here for the taking..
Thanks, as well. I know everyone is trying to do something every day.

steph3n
03-14-2008, 01:24 AM
Me too. I would like to know why the TV ads were so horrible when so much creative stuff was out here for the taking..
Thanks, as well. I know everyone is trying to do something every day.

he's already answered this, what works on youtube doesn't work on tv, time is pricey.

kaleidoscope eyes
03-14-2008, 06:40 AM
Welcome Jonathan, hope you stick around! ;)

jason43
03-14-2008, 07:00 AM
I'd also like to know what was going on on the 5th of November. I have a napkin from breakfast that morning where I was writing down numbers and times trying to get a projection and was almost crapping my pants. I thought it was going to slow down but it just kept going... best day of the campaign was watching that number go up that day...

Also, what is the reaction inside the campaign about all the conspiracy theorists? Was being constantly linked to 'extremist' groups a major concern as far as press goes? Was there any planning on how to deal with that without alienating supporters? To me, that seems like it would have been one of the harder parts to deal with...

Do you think they were prepared enough for the reaction and fundraising success, were there plans in place before for what they would do with X amount of money, or did they just fly by the seat of their pants when it all happened?

Was the main point of this to create a movement or to seriously run for president? I (and others) have been fighting on here about spreading the message, getting behind freedom candidates for congress, putting less emphasis on the Paul campaign (especially since the primary is over in my state), discouraging a 3rd party run, and people think I'm a traitor for it... but that is what I am interpreting from the official youtube vids from Ron. Your thoughts on that? What should we be doing aside from 'everything you can'?

There needs to be some official liason between the campaign (or the PAC), and the grassroots... it was needed before, but it is really needed now because people are losing sight of the target and turning on each other. Just my thoughts and thanks for posting...

Exarel
03-14-2008, 07:13 AM
You guys did an absolutely horrible job with the money. I maxed out, but i've always felt that if you at least gave us better ideas how the money was being spent, you would have gotten a LOT more.

New York For Paul
03-14-2008, 07:23 AM
Well, I think there may be some truth to this comment. But I would also add that if they didn't expect things to turn out this well, neither did Ron. In fact, I don't think ANYONE, inside or outside of the campaign did.

I can tell you that everyone on our staff wanted to win this race desperately. And we all still do. But adding an "expert" would not have solved anything. Remember that Ron himself has said numerous times that he saw this campaign as an educational campaign...

As far as not responding to media requests, two points... first, you're right that the campaign was too late formulating a 5 star media team. It should have been in place earlier, and I fault myself in retrospect, as well as others, for sort of seeing it as a problem, but not realizing its magnitude. But, I will also say that many of the criticisms that people raise in this regard are unfounded. By the end of November, we had a system in place to responding to important media calls. But again, we can't respond to every local newspaper and TV station. We were forced to pick and choose appearances that were most important, particularly because the media did not care about surrogates for Ron Paul like they did for a Hillary Clinton. That meant that Ron had to do all of these appearances, which was just impossible. Many of the criticisms of the media team were centered on less important media -- not that all media aren't important, but you still clearly have to get Ron in front of the biggest media audience as you can, given time constraints.

Thank you for answering the questions. I have to respect that.

This is gut wrenching and heart breaking. I saw in in early July when you guys had more money than McCain that you could do well. So did the media. That is how I found out that Ron Paul was doing well. They reported the story.

I volunteered in the HQ in early August and saw the tremendous grassroots taking place. I could tell right then and there that this was a campaign with momentum. I judged the level of activity to be record breaking. Having been on many campaigns I had never seen a grassroots like this. Most campaigns spend their time and money begging people to help their campaign. Ron Paul's campaign was the opposite. People were begging to help him. I have never seen anything like it. Yet the campaign ignored and squandered this opportunity in the most horrible way.

I was expecting a great campaign outcome based on money and volunteer enthusiasm, yet I saw the problems of understaffing in the campaign in all areas and tried to do things about it. Yet most of the time the senior staff was on the road with Ron Paul instead of managing the HQ. I commented and lamented to various people about what was going on. I wrote a paper detailing the problems and some senior staff read it but probably reacted way too late months later if at all.

Having the national press team in place by November is great, but the campaign is practically over at that point if you are really trying to win.

I have to wonder if they really wanted to win race. An expert would have changed things immediately and we probably would have come in third in Iowa instead of fifth. McCain's momentum would have stalled at that point. The outcome would be very different today.

yongrel
03-14-2008, 07:55 AM
Thanks for taking the time to talk with us, Johnathan! It's much appreciated.

My question is this: In retrospect, what could the campaign have done to be more successful than it already has been?

JonathanBydlak
03-14-2008, 08:02 AM
Oh, and why didn't HQ dedicate someone whose only job was to keep the grassroots informed? Daily meetups on this forum would have dispelled much anger towards HQ and probably would have easily paid for the salary of the person by increased donations.

Most of the other campaigns had daily email updates and extensive grassroots coordinators.

Yeah, I agree that we should have been e-mailing supporters more often. Though it is a fine line between e-mailing all the time and spamming supporters. But I personally think that we had a long way to before bumping into that limit.

JonathanBydlak
03-14-2008, 08:07 AM
I do not believe it is undignified to attack the other 3 vigorously. If that is what it takes to win, I wish he would do it.

Remaining dignified is noble in times of peace, but in times of war, not if it means the death of God knows how many brown people as George Carlin (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDkhzHQO7jY) likes to put it, by taking the high road.

I want to see the Ron Paul that told that Morton Downey Jr audience member to go on a diet...I want to see some fire and vigor. I know he's still got it in him, and I know he thinks the message is enough, but it isn't, sadly.

Man, I wanted to see that Ron so many times, too! I think that one of the things that Ron has trouble with is that he doesn't want to pander at all. While that makes him so appealing to me personally, it also leads him not to tailor his message to his audience, which in my opinion is very different than pandering. I see that as rule number 1 of giving a speech or writing a paper.

But Dr. Paul doesn't see things that way. He believes issues like monetary policy and flawed Iraq policy are so critical that everyone needs to hear about them, regardless of whether he's speaking to a group of students, South Carolina veterans, or Silicon Valley software entrepreneurs. While that's admirable, I've got to say, it just doesn't win elections.

JonathanBydlak
03-14-2008, 08:11 AM
Jonathan,

Does Dr. Paul plan to run again for President in 2012?

I have absolutely no idea, to be honest. Of course, he'd be 76 at that time, so I'd find it pretty hard to believe, but then again, I don't think he ever thought that he was going to run at 72!

But regardless of what Ron decides to do, keep in mind that "the show must go on." We have to keep working diligently towards the goals that united us in the first place, and that work needs to take place regardles of whether there's a presidential election coming up.

As I said in a previous response, use the tools the campaign has provided in the precinct leader program, and go out and canvass your neighbors. Find other like-minded individuals, and get their support for Ron Paul, and more important -- the ideas of liberty. Get them to come with you to a local Republican party meeting. Have fun while doing it, and keep those meetups going strong!

dawnbt
03-14-2008, 08:12 AM
Hi Johnathan, I am glad you came on to answer some of the questions we the grassroots have had but never really seemed to get answers from the HQ. I want to thank you for all of your hard work. My question to you is probably one you have heard a thousand times over but I will ask again anyway. I realize that campaigning costs and that it costs alot of money. After the Nov 5th money-bomb success and again after the Boston Tea Party money-bombs success the campaign had ALOT more cash on hand than most of the other candidates including McCain and Huckabee by a wide margin. The media although never really friendly, after Nov 5th there seemed to be some real positives coming from the campaign media wise. We in MI had our primary on Jan 15th and McCain, Huckabee, and Romney were buzzing around this state speaking in small towns, large towns, putting on t.v. ads. Us Ron Paul supporters were getting our GOP people here going "is Ron coming to Grand Rapids? We would welcome a visit. We would be like were sure he will be here but no word from the HQ. Time past and it was is he coming? Well we do not know. Then to state directors and HQ people saying Ron will come if he sees you have enough organization and support. We did it and showed them we did. Then came the word like a week or so away from Jan 15th that nope he is not coming, leaving us with egg on our face in front of our local GOP who after his fundraising success started to actually give him a second look because at every GOP meeting we had we would double the number of Ron Paul supporters there, far surpasing any supporters from any other campaign. No Ron, No t.v. ads, little radio ads and 25 million sitting in the bank. This was not just isolated to MI as I heard this coming from several primary states. We also never recieved a campaign HQ in West Michigan although we were told to go look at them from which we could be successful precinct delegates. We did recieve much needed supplies about one week before primary day leaving us too little time to distribute it all out. Now mind you we had no money for a local HQ in Grand Rapids, but the night of the primary we had the money to hold a big party at some upscale hotel. There were alot of grassroots people that were just in shock at the way were being treated by the HQ. PLEASE, PLEASE, TELL ME what the hell we spent all that money on. Bacause watching McAIN AND ROMNEY AND hUCKABEE DO A FANTASTC JOB CAMPAIGNING HERE REALLY BLEW THE WIND OUT OF OUR SAILS.

+1000

dawnbt
03-14-2008, 08:17 AM
Can you tell us why the ticker is down on the Ron Paul website? Are we still donating to the campaign or are we supposed to donate to the Liberty PAC?

JonathanBydlak
03-14-2008, 08:33 AM
Hi Johnathan, I am glad you came on to answer some of the questions we the grassroots have had but never really seemed to get answers from the HQ. I want to thank you for all of your hard work. My question to you is probably one you have heard a thousand times over but I will ask again anyway. I realize that campaigning costs and that it costs alot of money. After the Nov 5th money-bomb success and again after the Boston Tea Party money-bombs success the campaign had ALOT more cash on hand than most of the other candidates including McCain and Huckabee by a wide margin. The media although never really friendly, after Nov 5th there seemed to be some real positives coming from the campaign media wise. We in MI had our primary on Jan 15th and McCain, Huckabee, and Romney were buzzing around this state speaking in small towns, large towns, putting on t.v. ads. Us Ron Paul supporters were getting our GOP people here going "is Ron coming to Grand Rapids? We would welcome a visit. We would be like were sure he will be here but no word from the HQ. Time past and it was is he coming? Well we do not know. Then to state directors and HQ people saying Ron will come if he sees you have enough organization and support. We did it and showed them we did. Then came the word like a week or so away from Jan 15th that nope he is not coming, leaving us with egg on our face in front of our local GOP who after his fundraising success started to actually give him a second look because at every GOP meeting we had we would double the number of Ron Paul supporters there, far surpasing any supporters from any other campaign. No Ron, No t.v. ads, little radio ads and 25 million sitting in the bank. This was not just isolated to MI as I heard this coming from several primary states. We also never recieved a campaign HQ in West Michigan although we were told to go look at them from which we could be successful precinct delegates. We did recieve much needed supplies about one week before primary day leaving us too little time to distribute it all out. Now mind you we had no money for a local HQ in Grand Rapids, but the night of the primary we had the money to hold a big party at some upscale hotel. There were alot of grassroots people that were just in shock at the way were being treated by the HQ. PLEASE, PLEASE, TELL ME what the hell we spent all that money on. Bacause watching McAIN AND ROMNEY AND hUCKABEE DO A FANTASTC JOB CAMPAIGNING HERE REALLY BLEW THE WIND OUT OF OUR SAILS.

Wow, are you what they call a "troll" in these parts? :D

Haha, just kidding. I'll be happy to answer your questions as best I can.

First, let me dispel one myth... we never had $25 million in the bank. In fact, I don't think the campaign ever had $15 million in the bank. You see, unlike candidates like McCain, who should have been long-eliminated were it not for a love affair from the media, Dr. Paul had no name recognition. That meant we had to spend as much as we possibly could, getting Dr. Paul's name out in the public sphere. In essence, we had to create our own media, because we weren't getting much in the way of earned media.

Now, as far as the money bombs were concerned, it's true that we got a good deal of positive press from them. But those events by themselves were not sufficient to generate the amount of press that we needed.So with resources limited more than many people in the grassroots understood, we needed to target the money that we were spending. The decision was, as you all know, largely made to focus on the early primary states, because doing well in those states was the only way to dispel the "can he translate his online support into boots on the ground" line.

I think I've mentioned this on a couple of occasions, and I know some people have jumped on me, but the wait that we had to go through leading up to the second money bomb did make things somewhat difficult for the campaign to accomplish that goal. The e-mail that was sent out asking for more money before December 16th was sent because we had to go down from TV in Iowa. Dr. Paul had been at 1% (or lower) in Iowa, prior to us being on TV, and we were seeing our poll numbers rally 5-7% during the two week period we were running ads. But then we had to go down on TV for close to a month, because at that time, we could not afford to spend on TV in Iowa in addition to direct mail, radio, TV, phone banking, staff, etc. in other states like New Hampshire, South Carolina, etc.

So long story short on that point, people need to realize that at no point did we really have as much money as we needed to run a full-fledged campaign everywhere in the country, as much as we all wanted to. Some people were inevitably going to be disappointed.

As far as the "how the money was spent" question, I don't really have the knowledge to document every line-item expense, nor do I think that it's appropriate. Your best bet to answer that question is to look in the FEC reports... you'll probably figure out more by doing that than I'd be able to tell you.

With regards to Michigan specifically, I think your "snubbing" came from a couple of factors. First, your state was winner-take-all, and with Romney's background in the state, it was a contest where our chances were not as good as, say, New Hampshire. Second, remember that Dr. Paul was a sitting congressman, and he took his job seriously. I certainly wish he would have run "full-time," but the fact is that he valued very highly not missing any important votes. That constraint left the campaign with far less time with Ron that any of us would have liked, and so again, some people were bound to be disappointed. We had to focus Ron's time in some areas at the expense of others. So when you talk about the campaigning done by other candidates, keep in mind that they did not see themselves as being constrained in this way.

JonathanBydlak
03-14-2008, 08:33 AM
I have to ask. Was there ever a secret billionaire or millionaire?? :)

Umm, Mitt Romney? :)

Haha, not that I know of...

JonathanBydlak
03-14-2008, 08:34 AM
Thanks for listening to us - were you ever on the grassroots conference calls - sorry if they got to heated - we were all just trying to help

No, I wasn't ever on those. Probably should have been.

JonathanBydlak
03-14-2008, 08:36 AM
I totally understand all this and often found myself defending HQ when people would criticize the media staff for not responding to interview requests for big interview opportunities. And I know you handled fundraising and not media, but it's really hard to understand when you consider how many times Ron was available to go on shows such as Alex Jones.

Yeah, I understand that point. I actually was involved in a bunch of media things along the way, so I do have some insight about this.

Remember that Dr. Paul made a promise early in the campaign to go to Alex Jones frequently. Ron's not one to break promises, regardless of how politically expedient it may be to do so. That's why he's got the congressional record that he does, after all, despite the pressure others may have been putting on him.

JonathanBydlak
03-14-2008, 08:40 AM
Is there any way you can describe the atmosphere/expectations around the office on November 4th? I think that would be interesting to hear.

Phew, man. I don't remember exactly, but I know we were all very excited. None of us really knew what to expect. I can remember personally saying that I'd be happy with $1 mil (always good to set expectation a bit low), but I think in reality I was expecting something more along the lines of $2 mil. So needless to say, I (and pretty much everyone else) was blown away!

I'll never forget the piece Wolf Blitzer did on November 5th or 6th.... "The Ron Paul campaign is claiming to have raised over $4 mil. We can't confirm that these are processed credit card checks." What a riot.

JonathanBydlak
03-14-2008, 08:44 AM
Me too. I would like to know why the TV ads were so horrible when so much creative stuff was out here for the taking..
Thanks, as well. I know everyone is trying to do something every day.

Well, to summarize what I think I said to options trader earlier... keep in mind that TV ads look different on TV than on your computer. While I know that people weren't happy with the first NH ad, the number of phone calls and havoc that this wreaked at HQ was completely overwhelming. To be honest, I think it made a lot of people hesitant to be as open with our grassroots supporters as possible, because we couldn't handle having people turn on us like that again. In fact, we even had to put up our second TV ad much earlier than we wanted to, just to appease our supporters. We played that hand when we didn't think it was wise.

And again, sure, even stuff that's on YouTube was great, but was it 30 seconds or a minute long? How would it look on TV? And how much would we have to pay for it, because FEC regs don't allow campaigns to just "take" things like that.

JonathanBydlak
03-14-2008, 09:03 AM
I'd also like to know what was going on on the 5th of November. I have a napkin from breakfast that morning where I was writing down numbers and times trying to get a projection and was almost crapping my pants. I thought it was going to slow down but it just kept going... best day of the campaign was watching that number go up that day...

Also, what is the reaction inside the campaign about all the conspiracy theorists? Was being constantly linked to 'extremist' groups a major concern as far as press goes? Was there any planning on how to deal with that without alienating supporters? To me, that seems like it would have been one of the harder parts to deal with...

Do you think they were prepared enough for the reaction and fundraising success, were there plans in place before for what they would do with X amount of money, or did they just fly by the seat of their pants when it all happened?

Was the main point of this to create a movement or to seriously run for president? I (and others) have been fighting on here about spreading the message, getting behind freedom candidates for congress, putting less emphasis on the Paul campaign (especially since the primary is over in my state), discouraging a 3rd party run, and people think I'm a traitor for it... but that is what I am interpreting from the official youtube vids from Ron. Your thoughts on that? What should we be doing aside from 'everything you can'?

There needs to be some official liason between the campaign (or the PAC), and the grassroots... it was needed before, but it is really needed now because people are losing sight of the target and turning on each other. Just my thoughts and thanks for posting...

Man, you guys just keep the questions coming...

As far as November 5th, you weren't the only one "crapping your pants" :) It was an amazing feat, and probably the most exciting day to be involved with the campaign.

As far as all th conspiracy theorists, I think our attitude was the same as Dr. Paul has stated publicly. When people get involved with a political campaign, they are essentially endorsing the candidate's views, regardless of other disagreements they may have. But the candidate does not have to endorse the views of any one group. I can't really speak for Dr. Paul beyond what he's said publicly.

But I'd also add that our view was that we didn't think much could be done about supporters that the press didn't like. Any campaign has supporters that other groups of people see as "unsavory." Just look at what Obama's now dealing with. But even if we believed some supporters were not helping us, which I personally think there's a case for, though others disagree... I don't think there's anything that really can be done from the campaign's perspective.

You're right, though. This was a very tough thing to deal with.

As far as being prepared for the fundraising success, I think we were prepared in some ways and not prepared in others. For one, we had no idea how much was going to come in, and so we couldn't plan to spend money that we didn't really have. But once we had it in the bank, then I think we all believed that the ante had been raised. We were then given the chance to do things that we never thoughts we would be able to do, and we started going after those things. Like I said earlier, you never can have enough money, but I think expectations internally were starting to be increased after November 5th.

That said, I'll be honest, and say that I don't think we handled the press that came out of it as well as we could have. We got Ron on tons of shows, and had more media hits than we had pretty had in the entire campaign within a few days. But in retrospect, we really needed to also have many campaign surrogates going out in the press as well. That way, we'd keep being able to get those people on the news even after November 5th. Unfortuantely, we weren't equipped to do that at that point in time.

My other personal feeling is that we should have worked harder getting on nightly network news, not just shows like the Situation Room. Fact is still, even in the internet age, that many people only get their news from watching the Tom Brokaws, etc. And while we got tons of press from November 5th, we really needed to turn that into sustained coverage on the major networks. That didn't happen, part because we weren't equipped to do it, and part because the press stopped caring about Ron Paul again as soon as the novelty of the money bombs wore off.

As far as what the point of the campaign was... I think the short answer is that it was both. With Dr. Paul not really believing that he had a good chance of winning in the early going (as he repeatedly stated on the campaign trail), there needed to be another reason to go forward with the presidential run. And while I personally wish Ron had believed a lot more strongly in the support he was getting, I see starting a movement as almost more important.

What you can do now, as I mentioned earlier, is keep doing what you're doing, but also try to do it through your local Republican party establishment. Go to meetings, learn who the important people are, gain their trust, and sway their point of view gently but surely. We know things like sign waves, while fun, are largely ineffective, but even handing out literature isn't as important as getting involved in the party. Remember, it's that apparatus that gives McCain the strength he currently has. Let me know if that's not clear, or if you have further questions on what we all can be doing.

And as an aside, I'm very hopeful that at some point, a lot of great organizations will come out of this campaign. And there should be opportunities there to get involved recruiting and supporting congressional candidates, and in other things of that nature.

Finally, I agree that there needs to be someone in a liason role, but keep in mind as we've said multiple times, it's a fine line between communicating with grassroots supporters and "coordinating." I don't believe that the campaign can legally have someone with that title. That's why we put more emphasis on the Daily Dose, albeit a little late in the game. But it's still worth all of you reading on a daily basis, and there's even some talk amongst some of us staffers of keeping up a blog of our own to keep our communication with all of you going after the campaign.

Thanks so much for your insightful questions.

JonathanBydlak
03-14-2008, 09:08 AM
You guys did an absolutely horrible job with the money. I maxed out, but i've always felt that if you at least gave us better ideas how the money was being spent, you would have gotten a LOT more.

I understand your viewpoint, and I can't really argue for or against it either way. It's tough really knowing how money in an organization is spent, and believe me, even in the campaign many of us were not privvy to all of the details.

But I'd also say to people who held out donating more simply because of that, you didn't help the campaign. That's a decision that each person needs to decide for himself or herself, but how could we possibly let the public know how we were spending your all of the money? John McCain and Mitt Romney would have been drooling nonstop if they knew.

Think of this scenario... "Concord Monitor reports that Ron Paul is dumping $3 mil into direct mail in New Hampshire... in other news, Mitt Romney wrote a $5 mil check and bought some direct mail of his own." It was certainly on the table to be more open about expenditures, but in the end, we couldn't risk situations like this. Because again, we did not have unlimited resources at our disposal.

jason43
03-14-2008, 09:13 AM
Thanks man,

One more short question...

Did you even have anyone with an ear out to the grassroots? Sometimes it seemed like Ron was suprised when he heard about things like the blimp, etc.

Peace&Freedom
03-14-2008, 09:14 AM
I think one of the problems at the outset was the incestuous polls-media coverage relationship, where big media (who sponsor most polls) would leave out Paul's name in most of the surveys conducted through 2007, then point to Paul's low polling numbers as a rationale for not covering him. The public was not made aware that polling is not a neutral third party element, but a contracted surrogate of the press used to track or not track whom the media wants. The public tends to think when they hear a poll announced on the news, that the organization did it out of its own curiosity, instead of as a hiree.

To counter this, I asked the campaign at the time to put aside a little money to do polling with big name firms (Zogby, Rasmussen et al) that 'manufactured' a double digit result for Paul (say, just him versus the 'frontrunners') that could then become part of the news cycle. There are ways to do this depending on how the questions are asked, and in what sequence. Doing as little as 1-2 polls like this a month (at about a meager $10-15,000 each, which is nothing for a Pesidential campaign budget) would have created our own buzz for Paul, and taken away the media's alibi for not taking him seriously. I even started to put together a grassroots-sponsored Zogby poll myself (as anybody can call up the service and get a quote for a scientific phone poll), including drafting the questions, and was raising money for it.

I told Lew Moore in a phone conversation LAST June (during the Zogby Poll project) that unless there were polls published showing Paul getting into the double digits, the media would continue their 'silent blackout' of Paul (by not including him in most polls they sponsored), and this would keep Paul from being treated seriously. Moore asked me to suspend the independent survey we were commissioning anyway, saying HQ had their own polling strategy. At this point, I see no evidence of the campaign ever having pursued a polling plan to counter the poll-blackout the media conducted to bury Paul throughout 2007. It seems to me the cheapest way to counter the media while creating news that favors the candidate, as it takes advantage of the same public ignorance about the contracted status of poll organizations. So, what exactly happened with HQ's polling strategy?

JonathanBydlak
03-14-2008, 09:22 AM
Thank you for answering the questions. I have to respect that.

This is gut wrenching and heart breaking. I saw in in early July when you guys had more money than McCain that you could do well. So did the media. That is how I found out that Ron Paul was doing well. They reported the story.

I volunteered in the HQ in early August and saw the tremendous grassroots taking place. I could tell right then and there that this was a campaign with momentum. I judged the level of activity to be record breaking. Having been on many campaigns I had never seen a grassroots like this. Most campaigns spend their time and money begging people to help their campaign. Ron Paul's campaign was the opposite. People were begging to help him. I have never seen anything like it. Yet the campaign ignored and squandered this opportunity in the most horrible way.

I was expecting a great campaign outcome based on money and volunteer enthusiasm, yet I saw the problems of understaffing in the campaign in all areas and tried to do things about it. Yet most of the time the senior staff was on the road with Ron Paul instead of managing the HQ. I commented and lamented to various people about what was going on. I wrote a paper detailing the problems and some senior staff read it but probably reacted way too late months later if at all.

Having the national press team in place by November is great, but the campaign is practically over at that point if you are really trying to win.

I have to wonder if they really wanted to win race. An expert would have changed things immediately and we probably would have come in third in Iowa instead of fifth. McCain's momentum would have stalled at that point. The outcome would be very different today.

Thanks for these comments. I'll respond to them, but I would like to sort out some things that are assertions from things that are facts.

First, you say that "the campaign ignored and squandered this opportunity in the most horrible way." Well, we did best as we knew how, and perhaps that wasn't good enough, or perhaps there are many reasons why the campaign did not result in Ron Paul being our next president. A lot of factors influence elections, and the mere existence of grassroots support does not mean that a win should have been a lock, if not for official staff. Grassroots support is only valuable if people are doing the right things. And the blame for that not always being the case, in my opinion, lies both with HQ and with individual supporters. On the one hand, we did not communicate as specifically as we could have and as frequently as we could have. But to be honest, a lot of people were more content to do signwaves than canvass their own districts. And I should know, because I was one of those signwavers before joining the campaign. So, there's plenty of blame to go around, and I don't think it's fair to heap it all on one group of people.

As far as your understaffing point... I pretty much completely agree with you there. We were very understaffed for much of the campaign. Not that I'm asking for sympathy, but you should know that most people in our office were there until past midnight on most nights. There was a stretch when my personal hours ran in the 10am - 2am range. And I was hardly the exception in that regard. So we all put in the hours to make up for that understaffing.

But, also keep in mind, again, that resources are no infinite. If we spent more on staff, someone somewhere else would be upset that they weren't seeing TV ads in their state. There are tradeoffs that needed to be made, and while I'm sure there are many that could have been made better, it's not fair for anyone to complain because we didn't have unlimited resources.

You say "Having the national press team in place by November is great, but the campaign is practically over at that point if you are really trying to win." I pretty much agree with this, too. It's hard getting everything done that needs to be done, and this was probably the biggest mistake made on the campaign. Jesse Benton was and is very able and talented at what he does, but he couldn't do it alone.

Finally, on your point about an expert changing things... would you every say "if only we could get an expert in the government, things would be instantly better"? Because I wouldn't. So why should any of us believe that the same is true with a campaign. One person in an orgnization does not make the difference that you seem to think, and it's really just a slight against the talented people who already in the campaign. That's not to say additional people wouldn't have helped -- just that I believe it's incorrect to think finding that "right person" would have won Ron Paul the election. In that regard, the one person who controlled our chances was Ron Paul himself.

JonathanBydlak
03-14-2008, 09:26 AM
Thanks for taking the time to talk with us, Johnathan! It's much appreciated.

My question is this: In retrospect, what could the campaign have done to be more successful than it already has been?

Ah, I've been waiting for this question, because it's probably what I've thought about more than anything else during my time on the campaign. Here're just a few things off the top of my head, and we can delve into these more if you like:

1. Better and more frequent communications with grassroots supporters.
2. Better communication with field staff.
3. Earlier and more emphasis on the precinct leader program.
4. Having a full media team in place earlier in the campaign.

Those are the biggest things the campaign could have done in my mind. In all honesty, though, I think a lot of the more important things needed to be done by Ron himself. Things like traveling and campaigning more, tailoring his message better to Republicans, calling out other candidates for the ridiculous things they say, etc.

JonathanBydlak
03-14-2008, 09:28 AM
Can you tell us why the ticker is down on the Ron Paul website? Are we still donating to the campaign or are we supposed to donate to the Liberty PAC?

You still should be donating to the campaign. I think it was just taken down because it's clear that money is not flowing in at the same rate as it was earlier. So it probably doesn't make sense to emphasize fundraising as much in the past. You should also note that the precinct leader program is front and center. That wasn't an accidental decision.

angelatc
03-14-2008, 09:29 AM
We in the grassroots need some leadership, and regardless of your failings, we need someone who has a voice, patience, decisiveness and motivation to act. We likely won't pay you, but I'm very intrigued with what you have to offer.

Yes, I'd like to know Jonathon's opinion about what Jonathon did. I'd like to know what he did right, and what he thinks he will do better next time.

We can all learn from each other's mistakes, but we need to be adult enough to not condemn each other for goals and opportunities that may have been missed.

Since it hasn't killed us, it should only make us stronger.

I'd also like to know of some resources for back office type stuff. Learning about PAC FEC regs, and Accounting standards for PACs.

JonathanBydlak
03-14-2008, 09:30 AM
Thanks man,

One more short question...

Did you even have anyone with an ear out to the grassroots? Sometimes it seemed like Ron was suprised when he heard about things like the blimp, etc.

Haha... of course we did! I read the forums multiple times a day... so much so that I had to take it out of my favorites folder so I wouldn't read it as much.

Whether you knew it or not, we were aware and listening to what you were saying. We were kind of like Big Brother :D

JonathanBydlak
03-14-2008, 09:36 AM
I think one of the problems at the outset was the incestuous polls-media coverage relationship, where big media (who sponsor most polls) would leave out Paul's name in most of the surveys conducted through 2007, then point to Paul's low polling numbers as a rationale for not covering him. The public was not made aware that polling is not a neutral third party element, but a contracted surrogate of the press used to track or not track whom the media wants. The public tends to think when they hear a poll announced on the news, that the organization did it out of its own curiosity, instead of as a hiree.

To counter this, I asked the campaign at the time to put aside a little money to do polling with big name firms (Zogby, Rasmussen et al) that 'manufactured' a double digit result for Paul (say, just him versus the 'frontrunners') that could then become part of the news cycle. There are ways to do this depending on how the questions are asked, and in what sequence. Doing as little as 1-2 polls like this a month (at about a meager $10-15,000 each, which is nothing for a Pesidential campaign budget) would have created our own buzz for Paul, and taken away the media's alibi for not taking him seriously. I even started to put together a grassroots-sponsored Zogby poll myself (as anybody can call up the service and get a quote for a scientific phone poll), including drafting the questions, and was raising money for it.

I told Lew Moore in a phone conversation LAST June (during the Zogby Poll project) that unless there were polls published showing Paul getting into the double digits, the media would continue their 'silent blackout' of Paul (by not including him in most polls they sponsored), and this would keep Paul from being treated seriously. Moore asked me to suspend the independent survey we were commissioning anyway, saying HQ had their own polling strategy. At this point, I see no evidence of the campaign ever having pursued a polling plan to counter the poll-blackout the media conducted to bury Paul throughout 2007. It seems to me the cheapest way to counter the media while creating news that favors the candidate, as it takes advantage of the same public ignorance about the contracted status of poll organizations. So, what exactly happened with HQ's polling strategy?

Unfortunately, I can't really shed any light on this at all. There were internal polls going on, and I think there's some merit to your ideas, but I also think that a few polls like what you describe would not have done the trick. What it all boils down to in this regard is that we needed more support than we had, so that we'd actually turn up with double digit support in those polls... Rather than try to fudge polls, why not just get a high level in the ones where Ron's name was listed?

You know, this just reminded me of a great book that I think it'd be worth everyone reading. Hunter S. Thompson's On the Campaign Trail, '72 (http://www.amazon.com/Fear-Loathing-Campaign-Trail-72/dp/0446698229/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1205508940&sr=8-1) documents how a largely unknown George McGovern polling 5% managed to take on and take over the Democratic party apparatus through a huge network of well-organized volunteer canvassers. It's really eye-opening, and very applicable to our movement. I strongly recommend it.

UnitedWeStand
03-14-2008, 09:37 AM
but how could we possibly let the public know how we were spending your all of the money?

By running national ads. The money didn't just come in from Nh and IA, it came from all over, even from Kentucky and New Mexico.

I think the idea is not just running ads to influence immiediate voters, but to gain supporters all across the nation- supporters who would grow the momentum, donate, and encourage others to donate and get involved.

Basically, I think "we" should have used more of the money to spread the seed across the country, rather than just on fertilizing the early primary states with direct mailings.

As others have stated, if donators saw their money being spent on ads, they would've donated more--and the many people who saw the ads would've donated more. There was a large contigency of people on this board, and without im sure, who thought HQ was squandering the donations. Granted, how many of us have ever run a campaign, few. But I think that the reason people donated was for the sole reason to see national tv ads, and to let Ron Paul know he was loved. So, the disapointment of no national ads was catastrophic to donations.

So, while the decision was made to spend the money on frugal "good return on investment" direct mailings--- I personally wish that some effort had been made to analyze donations, the people's motives and how to best encourage future donations. People were donating to see national ads. National ads would've increased donations from those who donated previously, and found and encouraged new donators.

I'd like to say that I know that you are not personally responsible. But your comments about how ineffectual national ads would've been and how smart it was to spend millions of dollars spent on direct mailings is alarming.

limequat
03-14-2008, 09:37 AM
Jonathan

1) Thanks so much for coming on the boards and answering our questions.

2) Thanks so much more for being a part of the official campaign.

Many of us here gave until it hurt (time and money), and can emphathize with your effort.
I hope you stick around. So far, your comments have been invaluable.

FreedomRings
03-14-2008, 09:37 AM
Ron will not run as an independent. Sometimes I wish he had snapped back angrily at reporters and made it 100% clear early on that he never would do so. But he simply will not, and it's probably not the best thing for the movement.

I think of it this way. On the one hand, I would love to see Ron run independent. I think in an election between a warmonger (McCain) and another warmonger (Clinton) or a false-peacenik (Obama), Ron would stand out so much. But it's terribly hard to run indy. On top of getting on the ballot, the bigger problem is getting the press and the public to take you seriously and think you have a chance of winning. If we couldn't do that with Ron running as a Republican, what makes us think they would if he ran as an independent?


If, as Ron believes, it's all about the "message" rather than winning the Presidency, isn't that an even bigger argument for running as an Independent?

Millions of people are clamoring for real change but will never hear about the Ron Paul message because they didn't pay much attention to the Republican primaries in the first place. They will see the economy collapsing but they won't know what's happening to them and they'll never realize there was an alternative. Their lives will be ruined, their spirits weakened, their hopes for the future smashed. They will readily agree to more wars and loss of liberty, and all that only because Ron Paul didn't run as an Independent and use that platform to tell them what's really going on.

As for winning, to really succeed as an "educational campaign", you have to run it as if you actually wanted to win. If Ron hadn't stared down Stephanopoulos and made clear that he was in it for the win, he would have never attracted the massive grassroots attention that he got. If he had said from the beginning, "Let's be realistic, the chance is close to zero, but it's all about the message anyway", I'm sure that most of us wouldn't even have bothered.

Many of us here are young (or young at heart), and though we appreciate the education, we want a courageous hero, someone we can look up to, whose memory will inspire us for the rest of our lives, who was far from perfect but who nevertheless overcame his personal shortcomings and took the battle to the enemy against all odds.

Right now, Ron Paul will be remembered as an armchair revolutionary who happened to start a movement but then didn't know what to do with it. His recent waffling leaves a bad taste, has alienated many supporters and will have the effect of practically throwing away the chance of inspiring millions more about the message of freedom.

If he runs as an Independent and doesn't win, at least the "message" will have been heard by a larger part of the population than it would have been otherwise. And I do believe that Ron could actually win if he applies the lessons learned from the primaries. Here's a couple of things he could do:

1. Relentlessly attack Obama, Clinton and McCain and expose and analyze their lies and shenanigans. Instead of the "Daily Dose" it should be the "Daily Attack". Get this to the point where when Americans hear one of the "big three" make some promise or pronouncement, they will instinctively think, "I wonder what Ron Paul has to say about that?"

2. Tailor his messages to the audience he is speaking to. He must be brought to realize that this is the only way to actually educate them. Right now he just throws out facts that average people simply won't understand, nor will they care much because he doesn't explain how it affects them anyway.

3. Stop justifying his actions with weak expressions like "my supporters would be disappointed if I dropped out...", or "endorsing McCain would go against what I've talked about for the past 30 years, and nobody would understand it" and so on. Be a man and say "I'm doing that because I choose to and because it's what's best for America, period".

4. Meet with foreign leaders as the inofficial representative of his voters, a small but growing part of the US population that wants "peace, commerce and honest friendship" with all. Meet with Chavez, Castro and Ahmadinejad and expose them to the wonders of free markets and gold-backed currencies. There's some free worldwide publicity for ya.

5. Apply any and all the other lessons learned from the present campaign, including interactions with the press, etc.

What are your thoughts on this, Jonathan? Based on your personal knowledge of Ron Paul, do you think he would be open to reading a letter by supporters that would outline some of these points and persuade him that he should put the interests of the country first and "jump over his shadow" so he can reach new audiences rather than continuing to preach to the increasingly discouraged choir?

I believe that running as an Independent won't hamper the effort to retake the Republican party in any way. On the contrary, pursuing both paths at the same time could make things happen so much faster.

mello
03-14-2008, 09:40 AM
Three Questions:

1) When the MSM started blitzing the airwaves with stories that Congressman Paul dropped out, why did it take so long to see a response from Dr. Paul correcting those stories?

2) Did HQ have any plans to contest the Texas vote? I read that only one fifth of his supporters that voted for him for congress also voted him for President which seems extremely unlikely. I also remember reading about other irregularities

3) Did HQ plan to take the Louisiana GOP to court over the blatant shenanigans during their caucus? I remembered seeing a video of Congressman Paul saying that they probably won Louisiana outright.

ButchHowdy
03-14-2008, 09:41 AM
Thank you for coming on Jonathan!

What was the deal with Neal (I'm a Libertarian, but...) Boortz?

jason43
03-14-2008, 09:44 AM
Haha... of course we did! I read the forums multiple times a day... so much so that I had to take it out of my favorites folder so I wouldn't read it as much.

Whether you knew it or not, we were aware and listening to what you were saying. We were kind of like Big Brother :D

I thought you would be, assuming that most people working on the campaign would be at least as obsessed as the rest of us on here, but sometimes it wasn't completely clear, Ron himself seemed to be kind of suprised at some of the crazy stuff people were doing. I wonder if he knows he was almost on the side of a Nascar:D

JonathanBydlak
03-14-2008, 09:46 AM
Yes, I'd like to know Jonathon's opinion about what Jonathon did. I'd like to know what he did right, and what he thinks he will do better next time.

We can all learn from each other's mistakes, but we need to be adult enough to not condemn each other for goals and opportunities that may have been missed.

Since it hasn't killed us, it should only make us stronger.

I'd also like to know of some resources for back office type stuff. Learning about PAC FEC regs, and Accounting standards for PACs.

Sure, this is a great question... probably the best yet.

Regardless of how much was a direct result of decisions made by me or others at HQ, I think it's tough to argue with how fundraising went. It was a huge process getting to the point of knowing how powerful transparency could be. I talked about this a bit to a group of students at George Washington. You might want to watch the first video here for that story: http://gwblogspot.blogspot.com/2008/02/ron-paul-staffers-speak-to-internet.html.

Some of my failings I touched on already in other contexts, but I'll mention a few more here:

Fundraising e-mails should have been more frequent, and clearer than they were. In a sense, I played the role of communicator with the grassroots, and I think that I needed to do a better job with that.

I also really fault myself for not seeing issues with other aspects of the campaign sooner than I did, and for not pushing them at all costs. A failing of being young, I guess...

JonathanBydlak
03-14-2008, 09:47 AM
Jonathan

1) Thanks so much for coming on the boards and answering our questions.

2) Thanks so much more for being a part of the official campaign.

Many of us here gave until it hurt (time and money), and can emphathize with your effort.
I hope you stick around. So far, your comments have been invaluable.

Thanks. It's good to know I'm still doing some good :)

FreedomRings
03-14-2008, 09:51 AM
Another question I've been wondering about:

Who wrote the Ron Paul emails to supporters? Did you hire a professional copywriter for that or was it someone from the campaign staff? I noticed that the tone changed significantly from one point forward; it was after one of the debates in November or December I think.

jpa
03-14-2008, 09:59 AM
Hi Jonathan,
First off, thanks for letting me into the Palo Alto event in Oct/Nov. :-)

My question is: what are your thoughts NH? Was there anything more we could have done to win that state? Did the Ron Paul campaign know how Buchanan won in 92 & 96?

My main regret for the HQ is not winning NH. Can you imagine how this campaign would have unfolded if Paul not McCain won NH (McCain would not have gotten any early momementum).

angelatc
03-14-2008, 10:01 AM
Sure, this is a great question... probably the best yet.

Regardless of how much was a direct result of decisions made by me or others at HQ, I think it's tough to argue with how fundraising went. It was a huge process getting to the point of knowing how powerful transparency could be. I talked about this a bit to a group of students at George Washington. You might want to watch the first video here for that story: http://gwblogspot.blogspot.com/2008/02/ron-paul-staffers-speak-to-internet.html.

Some of my failings I touched on already in other contexts, but I'll mention a few more here:

Fundraising e-mails should have been more frequent, and clearer than they were. In a sense, I played the role of communicator with the grassroots, and I think that I needed to do a better job with that.

I also really fault myself for not seeing issues with other aspects of the campaign sooner than I did, and for not pushing them at all costs. A failing of being young, I guess...

Don't fault yourself. Just recognize it and learn form it. And as much as I hate to say it, part of that is probably Ron Paul's responsibility.

Just for the record, I loathe asking people for money, and can't possibly imagine doing what you did. I am very glad that you did it!

I have to say that I think Meet Up is not the best way to motivate people. I know I can now appreciate how hard it is to move people off of the internet and into the streets.

JonathanBydlak
03-14-2008, 10:02 AM
By running national ads. The money didn't just come in from Nh and IA, it came from all over, even from Kentucky and New Mexico.

I think the idea is not just running ads to influence immiediate voters, but to gain supporters all across the nation- supporters who would grow the momentum, donate, and encourage others to donate and get involved.

Basically, I think "we" should have used more of the money to spread the seed across the country, rather than just on fertilizing the early primary states with direct mailings.

As others have stated, if donators saw their money being spent on ads, they would've donated more--and the many people who saw the ads would've donated more. There was a large contigency of people on this board, and without im sure, who thought HQ was squandering the donations. Granted, how many of us have ever run a campaign, few. But I think that the reason people donated was for the sole reason to see national tv ads, and to let Ron Paul know he was loved. So, the disapointment of no national ads was catastrophic to donations.

So, while the decision was made to spend the money on frugal "good return on investment" direct mailings--- I personally wish that some effort had been made to analyze donations, the people's motives and how to best encourage future donations. People were donating to see national ads. National ads would've increased donations from those who donated previously, and found and encouraged new donators.

I'd like to say that I know that you are not personally responsible. But your comments about how ineffectual national ads would've been and how smart it was to spend millions of dollars spent on direct mailings is alarming.

I already talked in an earlier post about why I didn't think national ads made a lot of sense, so I'm not going to rehash those. But I'd like to address your point about needing to reach everyone. The fact is, in our current political system, everyone's vote is not equal. I've found this study by some Brown economists to be pretty enlightening: http://www.brown.edu/Administration/News_Bureau/2007-08/07-073.html.

I don't think direct mail is necessarily very important, but knowing that some states are more important than others, I do believe that targetting our money wisely is very important. The fact that money came in to the campaign from all around the country does not mean that the most efficient usage of those resources is to spend it in proportion to where it came from. Again, with limited resources, you have to focus them where you're going to get the "biggest bang for your buck."

But even still, do you really believe that national ads were what made the difference in this campaign? I think there's merit to what you're saying, but even if I grant you that national ads are a great idea, I don't believe they'd have had any real effect on the end results.

amonasro
03-14-2008, 10:02 AM
Jonathan, thank you so much for taking time to do this. Your knowledge and expertise at this point in the game is invaluable. Forum readership has really dropped off lately, as you probably are aware.

One of the most frustrating things for grassroots was that we didn't know/couldn't control what was going on at HQ once the moneybombs started happening. Your answers here will finally lay some of that speculation to rest, and we can get on with the campaign.

What do you think about the stories of delegates taking over their respective precinct/county conventions in states like TX, CO, and MN? Do you think this will give us enough delegates to have an impact at the National Convention... maybe enough to change party platforms or, at the very least, to let Ron speak? Or are we being ridiculously unrealistic by thinking this?

JonathanBydlak
03-14-2008, 10:06 AM
If, as Ron believes, it's all about the "message" rather than winning the Presidency, isn't that an even bigger argument for running as an Independent?

Millions of people are clamoring for real change but will never hear about the Ron Paul message because they didn't pay much attention to the Republican primaries in the first place. They will see the economy collapsing but they won't know what's happening to them and they'll never realize there was an alternative. Their lives will be ruined, their spirits weakened, their hopes for the future smashed. They will readily agree to more wars and loss of liberty, and all that only because Ron Paul didn't run as an Independent and use that platform to tell them what's really going on.

As for winning, to really succeed as an "educational campaign", you have to run it as if you actually wanted to win. If Ron hadn't stared down Stephanopoulos and made clear that he was in it for the win, he would have never attracted the massive grassroots attention that he got. If he had said from the beginning, "Let's be realistic, the chance is close to zero, but it's all about the message anyway", I'm sure that most of us wouldn't even have bothered.

Many of us here are young (or young at heart), and though we appreciate the education, we want a courageous hero, someone we can look up to, whose memory will inspire us for the rest of our lives, who was far from perfect but who nevertheless overcame his personal shortcomings and took the battle to the enemy against all odds.

Right now, Ron Paul will be remembered as an armchair revolutionary who happened to start a movement but then didn't know what to do with it. His recent waffling leaves a bad taste, has alienated many supporters and will have the effect of practically throwing away the chance of inspiring millions more about the message of freedom.

If he runs as an Independent and doesn't win, at least the "message" will have been heard by a larger part of the population than it would have been otherwise. And I do believe that Ron could actually win if he applies the lessons learned from the primaries. Here's a couple of things he could do:

1. Relentlessly attack Obama, Clinton and McCain and expose and analyze their lies and shenanigans. Instead of the "Daily Dose" it should be the "Daily Attack". Get this to the point where when Americans hear one of the "big three" make some promise or pronouncement, they will instinctively think, "I wonder what Ron Paul has to say about that?"

2. Tailor his messages to the audience he is speaking to. He must be brought to realize that this is the only way to actually educate them. Right now he just throws out facts that average people simply won't understand, nor will they care much because he doesn't explain how it affects them anyway.

3. Stop justifying his actions with weak expressions like "my supporters would be disappointed if I dropped out...", or "endorsing McCain would go against what I've talked about for the past 30 years, and nobody would understand it" and so on. Be a man and say "I'm doing that because I choose to and because it's what's best for America, period".

4. Meet with foreign leaders as the inofficial representative of his voters, a small but growing part of the US population that wants "peace, commerce and honest friendship" with all. Meet with Chavez, Castro and Ahmadinejad and expose them to the wonders of free markets and gold-backed currencies. There's some free worldwide publicity for ya.

5. Apply any and all the other lessons learned from the present campaign, including interactions with the press, etc.

What are your thoughts on this, Jonathan? Based on your personal knowledge of Ron Paul, do you think he would be open to reading a letter by supporters that would outline some of these points and persuade him that he should put the interests of the country first and "jump over his shadow" so he can reach new audiences rather than continuing to preach to the increasingly discouraged choir?

I believe that running as an Independent won't hamper the effort to retake the Republican party in any way. On the contrary, pursuing both paths at the same time could make things happen so much faster.

I really sympathize with these arguments, and part of me definitely agrees with you. But I also see running as independent as "putting all our eggs in our basket." Because if Ron were not to win that race -- and let's be honest, the chances of winning as an independent are never very good -- then he would destroy any legitimacy within the Republican party. And then where would our revolution go?

So in that sense, it's better to be a gracious loser, ready to work for something bigger, than be perceived as a sore loser who takes actions that undermine the party. Like it or not, we need this apparatus to accomplish all the things that we want to do.

JonathanBydlak
03-14-2008, 10:09 AM
Three Questions:

1) When the MSM started blitzing the airwaves with stories that Congressman Paul dropped out, why did it take so long to see a response from Dr. Paul correcting those stories?

2) Did HQ have any plans to contest the Texas vote? I read that only one fifth of his supporters that voted for him for congress also voted him for President which seems extremely unlikely. I also remember reading about other irregularities

3) Did HQ plan to take the Louisiana GOP to court over the blatant shenanigans during their caucus? I remembered seeing a video of Congressman Paul saying that they probably won Louisiana outright.

Sure, three answers:

1.) I'm not sure that Dr. Paul knows that is the best thing to do at this point. I have my views, and there ae definitely many different opinions among Ron's closest advisors. And honestly, that miscommunication got ron more press than we'd seen in months!

2.) I don't think that's an irregularity. It's perfectly reasonable to think that people in Ron's district like him as their congressman but don't think he'd make a good president, or that they prefer someone else to be their president. I don't personally see much irregularity there are all.

3.) I'm not sure at this point what's going on in Lousiana. I know there clearly were things that should not have gone on there, but at some point, you hae to pick which battles you fight. So I wouldn't be surprised if the decision ends up being to make the front lines of the revolution somewhere else.

JonathanBydlak
03-14-2008, 10:11 AM
Thank you for coming on Jonathan!

What was the deal with Neal (I'm a Libertarian, but...) Boortz?

I have no idea. So many "libertarians" just don't have the spines that I'd like to see. Just imagine how great it would have been in just two or three other congressman had stood up next to Ron and said "I'm a Republican, and I believe what Ron Paul does, too"...

JonathanBydlak
03-14-2008, 10:11 AM
I thought you would be, assuming that most people working on the campaign would be at least as obsessed as the rest of us on here, but sometimes it wasn't completely clear, Ron himself seemed to be kind of suprised at some of the crazy stuff people were doing. I wonder if he knows he was almost on the side of a Nascar:D

I'm not sure that Ron knows what Nascar is! :)

Just kidding (I think)

JonathanBydlak
03-14-2008, 10:13 AM
Another question I've been wondering about:

Who wrote the Ron Paul emails to supporters? Did you hire a professional copywriter for that or was it someone from the campaign staff? I noticed that the tone changed significantly from one point forward; it was after one of the debates in November or December I think.

As far as I know, all correspondence from Ron came directly from Ron. I'm sure he had other people giving him ideas and helping him craft his messages, but I don't really know much more than that.

JonathanBydlak
03-14-2008, 10:16 AM
Hi Jonathan,
First off, thanks for letting me into the Palo Alto event in Oct/Nov. :-)

My question is: what are your thoughts NH? Was there anything more we could have done to win that state? Did the Ron Paul campaign know how Buchanan won in 92 & 96?

My main regret for the HQ is not winning NH. Can you imagine how this campaign would have unfolded if Paul not McCain won NH (McCain would not have gotten any early momementum).

Yeah, these are great questions. I think the problem with New Hampshire wasn't so much the result itself, but our result relative to expectations. Unlike Iowa or South Carolina, people had expectations for Ron in New Hampshire, because of it's somewhat more libertarian bent. But I think that perception is somewhat unfounded... As McCain showed, the base there is still pretty hawkish, and so the expectations were probably unreasonable.

If you want my truthful answer, I really believe that winning New Hampshire would have required Ron spending virtually all of his time there, and campaigning at the level that Mitt Romney and John McCain were. But again, that wasn't realy feasible with Ron being a sitting congressman.

JonathanBydlak
03-14-2008, 10:19 AM
Jonathan, thank you so much for taking time to do this. Your knowledge and expertise at this point in the game is invaluable. Forum readership has really dropped off lately, as you probably are aware.

One of the most frustrating things for grassroots was that we didn't know/couldn't control what was going on at HQ once the moneybombs started happening. Your answers here will finally lay some of that speculation to rest, and we can get on with the campaign.

What do you think about the stories of delegates taking over their respective precinct/county conventions in states like TX, CO, and MN? Do you think this will give us enough delegates to have an impact at the National Convention... maybe enough to change party platforms or, at the very least, to let Ron speak? Or are we being ridiculously unrealistic by thinking this?

To be honest, I have no idea. But I wouldn't really worry about those things. Let's do as well as we can, and then worry about trying to get the most out of the convention that we can. I'm optimistic we can make a difference at the convention, but to start talking about the specifics that we'd be able to get is really just useless speculation.

And remember, whether Ron is at the convention or not, the influence that delegates may have can be significant. So at this point, I'd encourage people to be focused on getting involved in their local Republican party, regardless of what happens to the cmapaign.

ButchHowdy
03-14-2008, 10:25 AM
I have no idea. So many "libertarians" just don't have the spines that I'd like to see. Just imagine how great it would have been in just two or three other congressman had stood up next to Ron and said "I'm a Republican, and I believe what Ron Paul does, too"...

I meant the booking of, then canceling of the scheduled interview on January 8th.

There seemed to be no conflict of timing as Neal reported Ron Paul was within eyeshot but then went to interview with some 'Ed' guy.

Was this to be a 'statement' against Neal's hostile interview style?

JonathanBydlak
03-14-2008, 10:26 AM
I meant the booking of, then canceling of the scheduled interview on January 8th.

There seemed to be no conflict of timing as Neal reported Ron Paul was within eyeshot but then went to interview with some 'Ed' guy.

Was this to be a 'statement' against Neal's hostile interview style?

No clue.

Sandra
03-14-2008, 10:28 AM
Jonathon, is there any way you can contact whoever is handling the Louisiana caucus mess? There are hundreds of people in the LA meetups awaiting an update of what's going on with it. So far we are the closest state for winning the caucus for Dr Paul and have been in the dark for a long long time as to what's happening. Thanks!

crazyfingers
03-14-2008, 10:29 AM
Hi Jonathan,

You’re doing a great job answering these questions; it’s very much appreciated. I’m wondering, now that the campaign is winding down, what vision does Ron Paul have for the future of the movement? I know that he is a reluctant leader, but what will become of the e-mail list of supporters? Also, would Ron Paul be willing to officially endorse the Republican Liberty Caucus as a vehicle for taking back the GOP? I know he has been involved with it in the past but I'm not sure how active the organization currently is.

Anyway, just some thoughts. Thanks for everything you’ve done, and continue to do!

JonathanBydlak
03-14-2008, 10:34 AM
Jonathon, is there any way you can contact whoever is handling the Louisiana caucus mess? There are hundreds of people in the LA meetups awaiting an update of what's going on with it. So far we are the closest state for winning the caucus for Dr Paul and have been in the dark for a long long time as to what's happening. Thanks!

Well, I can try to pass along that message, but I don't know that I can really do much more than that at this point.

JonathanBydlak
03-14-2008, 10:35 AM
Hi Jonathan,

You’re doing a great job answering these questions; it’s very much appreciated. I’m wondering, now that the campaign is winding down, what vision does Ron Paul have for the future of the movement? I know that he is a reluctant leader, but what will become of the e-mail list of supporters? Also, would Ron Paul be willing to officially endorse the Republican Liberty Caucus as a vehicle for taking back the GOP? I know he has been involved with it in the past but I'm not sure how active the organization currently is.

Anyway, just some thoughts. Thanks for everything you’ve done, and continue to do!

I wish I knew! I think he's really up in the air and trying hard to determine what the wisest course of action should be. I know that there definitely are some great plans on the drawing board...

jpa
03-14-2008, 10:37 AM
Yeah, these are great questions. I think the problem with New Hampshire wasn't so much the result itself, but our result relative to expectations. Unlike Iowa or South Carolina, people had expectations for Ron in New Hampshire, because of it's somewhat more libertarian bent. But I think that perception is somewhat unfounded... As McCain showed, the base there is still pretty hawkish, and so the expectations were probably unreasonable.

If you want my truthful answer, I really believe that winning New Hampshire would have required Ron spending virtually all of his time there, and campaigning at the level that Mitt Romney and John McCain were. But again, that wasn't realy feasible with Ron being a sitting congressman.


Something to think about for our the next run with the next liberty candidate. We need to win an early state to be considered legit by the MSM. Even at the expense of national fund raising, a congressional seat, etc...

Todd
03-14-2008, 10:41 AM
Thanks Jonathan for clarification on a great many things.
I'm not sure if this was addressed yet. ( I see it was already asked above)

How do you see the future of "The Revolution"? Ron himself has said it is bigger than just one man. What do you think should be the major goals of the grassroots in the next 4 years?

I think this forum should be one main focus to continue a place to network...but it has to stay viable and build on what was established.

yongrel
03-14-2008, 10:46 AM
Another question: Considering that you are/were an avid reader of the forums, what were some memorable moments? The Billionaire thread? Revolution9's tirades?

I can only imagine what it would be like to read this forum while sitting in HQ.

Thanks again for taking the time to answer our questions.

pepperpete1
03-14-2008, 10:56 AM
Well, I can try to pass along that message, but I don't know that I can really do much more than that at this point.

The message you have given us here of keep trying to get our delegates to the convention, and the signing up as a precinct leader, and spreading the word that Ron Paul is still running for President, are STILL VERY IMPORTANT.

Our state campaign co-ordinators should be taking every meet-up leader by the hand at least once a week and those meet-up persons should be in contact their members at least the same, stressing the same message.

WestMI4Paul stated our situation here in MI very well. I am here to say we did one hell of a job with the limited resources and lack of help from the state HQ.
It would have been nice to have at least been told that Ron was working in congress and would not be able to appear. We would have cheered him on for being the kind of representative we want in a president.

As for the media, everyone here needs to know that a law suit against them does not have to be taken up by Ron Paul or his campaign, any citizen can do so.
They broke rules right and left as far as covering RP.

Now when it comes to Louisiana, it will take the campaign to contest the illegal, unethical, manner in which that whole debacle was handled. I posted earlier the rules that pertain to this, and if the campaign does NOT address this it will be a travesty of justice, and the LAGOP will continue to run rough shod over every election that they see fit.

The campaign has until 22 days before the convention convenes to push this, let's hope they do so.

Ron has been ridiculed, scorned, ignored, slandered, and has remained the ever quiet country doctor type. I admire him in some ways, but kripes even David picked up a stone finally. The truth of his message must appear as strong as the deliverer.

pacelli
03-14-2008, 11:00 AM
Haha... of course we did! I read the forums multiple times a day... so much so that I had to take it out of my favorites folder so I wouldn't read it as much.

Whether you knew it or not, we were aware and listening to what you were saying. We were kind of like Big Brother :D

In that case I think a number of highly critical forum posters owe you personally an enormous apology. There was some serious venom being spewed in your direction. Of course, many of those posters have been banned after being proven as moles from other campaigns. Romney's internet bots loved to come here and deflate our campaign.

I just want to thank you for coming out from behind the curtain and starting this thread. I hope you continue to post !

I have a couple simple questions- Was anyone giving feedback to Ron on his debate performances? It seemed like he was getting some feedback or speech coaching-- there was an enormous difference between Ron in the first debate vs. Ron in the last Fox debate (i.e. when Carl Cameron asked him the electability question).

Also, during each debate, what was the atmosphere like in the campaign? Were people as upset as the rest of us when they would consistently snub him? I can remember yelling at the TV "LET HIM SPEAK!". :)

yongrel
03-14-2008, 11:08 AM
[QUOTE=pacelli;1349401]In that case I think a number of highly critical forum posters owe you personally an enormous apology. There was some serious venom being spewed in your direction. Of course, many of those posters have been banned after being proven as moles from other campaigns. Romney's internet bots loved to come here and deflate our campaign.QUOTE]

Ew, I remember the anti-Bydlak days. I doubt there are many posters on here still that were critical back then (most of them were trolls from various places). However, a good number of us fell for the trolls (myself included) and had a less than rosy image of Jonathan for a while. Luckily, those days have passed.

JonathanBydlak
03-14-2008, 11:09 AM
Thanks Jonathan for clarification on a great many things.
I'm not sure if this was addressed yet. ( I see it was already asked above)

How do you see the future of "The Revolution"? Ron himself has said it is bigger than just one man. What do you think should be the major goals of the grassroots in the next 4 years?

I think this forum should be one main focus to continue a place to network...but it has to stay viable and build on what was established.

Well, I think what's likely to happen is that a lot of people will drop off. The real important question is how many people will remain.

I think the general goal is to promote liberty in every way possible. As I said earlier, this could be through giving funding to congressional candidates, taking over your local Republican party, blogging... whatever. But at the same time, we need to know that the internet won't do it for us... we have to create our own infrastructure, just as Goldwater did in 1964.

JonathanBydlak
03-14-2008, 11:11 AM
Another question: Considering that you are/were an avid reader of the forums, what were some memorable moments? The Billionaire thread? Revolution9's tirades?

I can only imagine what it would be like to read this forum while sitting in HQ.

Thanks again for taking the time to answer our questions.

Haha.. yeah, the bilionaire thread was a good one, but I think my personal favorites were the threads criticizing me... WRellim, Austin356, and others had some great venom to throw my way :)

JonathanBydlak
03-14-2008, 11:12 AM
The message you have given us here of keep trying to get our delegates to the convention, and the signing up as a precinct leader, and spreading the word that Ron Paul is still running for President, are STILL VERY IMPORTANT.

Our state campaign co-ordinators should be taking every meet-up leader by the hand at least once a week and those meet-up persons should be in contact their members at least the same, stressing the same message.

WestMI4Paul stated our situation here in MI very well. I am here to say we did one hell of a job with the limited resources and lack of help from the state HQ.
It would have been nice to have at least been told that Ron was working in congress and would not be able to appear. We would have cheered him on for being the kind of representative we want in a president.

As for the media, everyone here needs to know that a law suit against them does not have to be taken up by Ron Paul or his campaign, any citizen can do so.
They broke rules right and left as far as covering RP.

Now when it comes to Louisiana, it will take the campaign to contest the illegal, unethical, manner in which that whole debacle was handled. I posted earlier the rules that pertain to this, and if the campaign does NOT address this it will be a travesty of justice, and the LAGOP will continue to run rough shod over every election that they see fit.

The campaign has until 22 days before the convention convenes to push this, let's hope they do so.

Ron has been ridiculed, scorned, ignored, slandered, and has remained the ever quiet country doctor type. I admire him in some ways, but kripes even David picked up a stone finally. The truth of his message must appear as strong as the deliverer.

That last paragraph is a really perceptive one in my opinion.

GunnyFreedom
03-14-2008, 11:16 AM
I do not believe it is undignified to attack the other 3 vigorously. If that is what it takes to win, I wish he would do it.

Remaining dignified is noble in times of peace, but in times of war, not if it means the death of God knows how many brown people as George Carlin (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDkhzHQO7jY) likes to put it, by taking the high road.

I want to see the Ron Paul that told that Morton Downey Jr audience member to go on a diet...I want to see some fire and vigor. I know he's still got it in him, and I know he thinks the message is enough, but it isn't, sadly.

Hear here!

The *only* real "mistake" I see from this campaign, call it more of a tactical error, is that there was too much commitment to the 'high road' on the part of Ron Paul and the NHQ.

I believe, in retrospect, that Ron Paul got his best bumps in polling when he got ANGRY at the several status quo's on the stage beside him.

just my opinion though.

JonathanBydlak
03-14-2008, 11:17 AM
In that case I think a number of highly critical forum posters owe you personally an enormous apology. There was some serious venom being spewed in your direction. Of course, many of those posters have been banned after being proven as moles from other campaigns. Romney's internet bots loved to come here and deflate our campaign.

I just want to thank you for coming out from behind the curtain and starting this thread. I hope you continue to post !

I have a couple simple questions- Was anyone giving feedback to Ron on his debate performances? It seemed like he was getting some feedback or speech coaching-- there was an enormous difference between Ron in the first debate vs. Ron in the last Fox debate (i.e. when Carl Cameron asked him the electability question).

Also, during each debate, what was the atmosphere like in the campaign? Were people as upset as the rest of us when they would consistently snub him? I can remember yelling at the TV "LET HIM SPEAK!". :)

Haha! No hard feelings, though I will admit that it was a bitter pill to swallow at the time. And to be honest, call me hard-headed, but from my perspective, the e-mail that brought so many people up in arms was not just a good thing to do -- it was necessary at the time. Maybe it hurt the tea party, but I don't really think so. People forget that there are diferent kinds of donors, and less than a fifth of our donors gave on Dec 16th. So we need to get every donor to respond, and everyone is motivated by different things.

As far as feedback from Ron's debates... it's been funny reading people's comments in this regard, because I think everyone on staff knew the things that Ron needed to do in debates. But for better or for worse, Ron is Ron, and he's going to say what he wants to say. I wish there had been some way to get him to frame his message better, because as we all know, content only gets you so far unfortunately.

Regarding atmosphere in the debates... man, I've probably never been so angry in my life as I've been during some of those. It got to the point where I couldn't really stand to watch them. Yes, we were all just as fuming, and just as excited as all of you were...

JonathanBydlak
03-14-2008, 11:18 AM
[QUOTE=pacelli;1349401]In that case I think a number of highly critical forum posters owe you personally an enormous apology. There was some serious venom being spewed in your direction. Of course, many of those posters have been banned after being proven as moles from other campaigns. Romney's internet bots loved to come here and deflate our campaign.QUOTE]

Ew, I remember the anti-Bydlak days. I doubt there are many posters on here still that were critical back then (most of them were trolls from various places). However, a good number of us fell for the trolls (myself included) and had a less than rosy image of Jonathan for a while. Luckily, those days have passed.

Hahaha! good save!

JonathanBydlak
03-14-2008, 11:19 AM
Hear here!

The *only* real "mistake" I see from this campaign, call it more of a tactical error, is that there was too much commitment to the 'high road' on the part of Ron Paul and the NHQ.

I believe, in retrospect, that Ron Paul got his best bumps in polling when he got ANGRY at the several status quo's on the stage beside him.

just my opinion though.

That's been my opinion for quite a while as well.

ronpaulhawaii
03-14-2008, 11:26 AM
Well, I think what's likely to happen is that a lot of people will drop off. The real important question is how many people will remain.

I think the general goal is to promote liberty in every way possible. As I said earlier, this could be through giving funding to congressional candidates, taking over your local Republican party, blogging... whatever. But at the same time, we need to know that the internet won't do it for us... we have to create our own infrastructure, just as Goldwater did in 1964.

Aloha, E komo mai, (Hi and welcome :))

Am enjoying watching this thread...

About infrastucture, a previous poster mentioned the Republican Liberty Caucus

www.rlc.org (http://www.rlc.org)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republican_Liberty_Caucus

ISTM, that this pre-existing organization might save quite a few steps in creating an infrastucture. Do you know much about this org? and, if so, any reasons why we should not be looking at it closely?

Mahalo (thanks)

m

GunnyFreedom
03-14-2008, 11:40 AM
Johnathan,

I have worked as a full time volunteer for RP08 now since October. I am from North Carolina, and I travelled to South Carolina and Alabama to canvass and phonebank and otherwise work. I worked directly with James Trementozzi in Charleston, SC, and with Bryan Roughton, Shana Kluck, Austin Wilkes, and Scott Morris in Alabama.

I just wanted to finally be able to tell someone that in SC, we needed MORE James Trementozzi and LESS Amanda Moore, and the work in Alabama was just amazing. The coordinated campaign we ran in Alabama worked amazingly well. Much of what we were able to accomplish was the "prep-work' for the canvass, and I tell you the truth, the people we managed to have the manpower to canvass, were nearly DESPERATE to learn about Ron Paul. With all the preliminary work we did in Alabama, we could have won that state if only we had the manpower to canvass there -- but two people just cannot canvass a whole state in 2 weeks.

I am still a full time volunteer for RO08 in North Carolina, a precinct delegate awaiting the Franklin county convention, and my mother is a county delegate in Vance County.

Now I'm not trying to get accolades here, I am doing two things with this post -- 1) telling you what worked and didn't, namely in SC James T worked and Amanda Moore didn't, and in AL, our strategy worked like gangbusters, but our lack of manpower didn't. and 2) I will be running either for NC State Gen'l assembly OR NC State Senate in 2010, and would welcome some advice and contacts and maybe even a measure of support in that effort.

James Trementozzi has contacted me directly in the last month to suggest just such a run, and after thinking on it, I think it is a good idea.

And thank you for your time and effort in this campaign -- no matter what else, we need every single person we can get in this effort to restore America.

Sincerely,
Glen Bradley

jdmyprez_deo_vindice
03-14-2008, 11:41 AM
First, thank you for all of the work you have given to this campaign and for taking the time to answer a few questions from those of us who gave everything we could and will continue to fight to the grave. Many of the previous posters have addressed questions I would have asked you but one has yet to be asked.

I was one of the folks who stood out in the freezing cold during the annual march for life that was held in D.C. I know that those of us on the ground that day were energized by the Jane Roe endorsement which came that morning. When Dr. Paul's time to speak came I (among others) were slightly baffled as to why he made no mention of the Jane Roe endorsement. I have seen estimates that there were over 400,000 people there and throughout the day we would constantly have to remind people that he got the endorsement of Jane Roe. So why did the campaign not make a bigger deal about this when it could have swayed so many of the "right to life voters". Thanks and keep up the good fight!

LarryWhite
03-14-2008, 11:50 AM
Do you think Kent Snyder's $48,000 salary for the month of January 2008 is excessive?

Barack Obama's campaign manager pulled in a little over $5000 and Hillary's campaign manager pulled in $11,000 for the same time period.

info is here: http://query.nictusa.com/pres/2008/M2/C00432914/B_PAYEE_C00432914.html

JonathanBydlak
03-14-2008, 11:54 AM
Aloha, E komo mai, (Hi and welcome :))

Am enjoying watching this thread...

About infrastucture, a previous poster mentioned the Republican Liberty Caucus

www.rlc.org (http://www.rlc.org)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republican_Liberty_Caucus

ISTM, that this pre-existing organization might save quite a few steps in creating an infrastucture. Do you know much about this org? and, if so, any reasons why we should not be looking at it closely?

Mahalo (thanks)

m

I don't know much about the RLC, so if it seems like something that could do some good, then I'd recommend that you look into it further. I personally, however, will be more inclined to give and get involved with whatever organizations come out of the campaign, just because I know the motivations of the people involved, and believe they are capable of running such organizations.

CMoore
03-14-2008, 11:54 AM
I think the campaign did an amazing job. Considering that you all started from ground zero when the other candidates had been building a campaign for a long time, the progress you made was great. People who blame the lack of a win on the campaign are failing to take into consideration the things going against this candidacy. There are many, many VERY powerful people who have a vested interest in seeing this movement fail. This candidate starts out with a millstone around his neck. The establishment has a great deal to lose if this movement catches on in a big way. They are fighting for their political lives and it shows. Dr. Paul was treated so unfairly that it is frightening. It scares me to know that the media has so bought into the status quo. We need to keep up, get involved, and continue the Revolution.

JonathanBydlak
03-14-2008, 11:55 AM
Johnathan,

I have worked as a full time volunteer for RP08 now since October. I am from North Carolina, and I travelled to South Carolina and Alabama to canvass and phonebank and otherwise work. I worked directly with James Trementozzi in Charleston, SC, and with Bryan Roughton, Shana Kluck, Austin Wilkes, and Scott Morris in Alabama.

I just wanted to finally be able to tell someone that in SC, we needed MORE James Trementozzi and LESS Amanda Moore, and the work in Alabama was just amazing. The coordinated campaign we ran in Alabama worked amazingly well. Much of what we were able to accomplish was the "prep-work' for the canvass, and I tell you the truth, the people we managed to have the manpower to canvass, were nearly DESPERATE to learn about Ron Paul. With all the preliminary work we did in Alabama, we could have won that state if only we had the manpower to canvass there -- but two people just cannot canvass a whole state in 2 weeks.

I am still a full time volunteer for RO08 in North Carolina, a precinct delegate awaiting the Franklin county convention, and my mother is a county delegate in Vance County.

Now I'm not trying to get accolades here, I am doing two things with this post -- 1) telling you what worked and didn't, namely in SC James T worked and Amanda Moore didn't, and in AL, our strategy worked like gangbusters, but our lack of manpower didn't. and 2) I will be running either for NC State Gen'l assembly OR NC State Senate in 2010, and would welcome some advice and contacts and maybe even a measure of support in that effort.

James Trementozzi has contacted me directly in the last month to suggest just such a run, and after thinking on it, I think it is a good idea.

And thank you for your time and effort in this campaign -- no matter what else, we need every single person we can get in this effort to restore America.

Sincerely,
Glen Bradley

I don't really know any of those people, so I can't really have an opinion either way.

JonathanBydlak
03-14-2008, 11:57 AM
First, thank you for all of the work you have given to this campaign and for taking the time to answer a few questions from those of us who gave everything we could and will continue to fight to the grave. Many of the previous posters have addressed questions I would have asked you but one has yet to be asked.

I was one of the folks who stood out in the freezing cold during the annual march for life that was held in D.C. I know that those of us on the ground that day were energized by the Jane Roe endorsement which came that morning. When Dr. Paul's time to speak came I (among others) were slightly baffled as to why he made no mention of the Jane Roe endorsement. I have seen estimates that there were over 400,000 people there and throughout the day we would constantly have to remind people that he got the endorsement of Jane Roe. So why did the campaign not make a bigger deal about this when it could have swayed so many of the "right to life voters". Thanks and keep up the good fight!

Haha, well, all I can say is that I wish I had more control about what Ron chooses to talk about! I spoke with Norma multiple times, and many of us worked hard to make that endorsement happen. We tried to make as big a deal about it as we could, and got a lot of press on it, particularly in Christian-oriented publications. But the mainstream media didn't care much about it, to be honest.

JonathanBydlak
03-14-2008, 12:00 PM
Do you think Kent Snyder's $48,000 salary for the month of January 2008 is excessive?

Barack Obama's campaign manager pulled in a little over $5000 and Hillary's campaign manager pulled in $11,000 for the same time period.

info is here: http://query.nictusa.com/pres/2008/M2/C00432914/B_PAYEE_C00432914.html

Hahaha... geez... now I know how these rumors get started!

The FEC reports do not break out individuals' salaries from expense reimbursements. So in other words, suppose we get Ron a private jet and reserve it using Kent's credit card. Kent needs to be reimbursed that money so that he can pay back his credit card bill. So Kent was not being paid $48,000 in a month... that includes a huge amount of reimbursements. The same goes for Lew and many others on our staff. Hope that helps!

JonathanBydlak
03-14-2008, 12:01 PM
I think the campaign did an amazing job. Considering that you all started from ground zero when the other candidates had been building a campaign for a long time, the progress you made was great. People who blame the lack of a win on the campaign are failing to take into consideration the things going against this candidacy. There are many, many VERY powerful people who have a vested interest in seeing this movement fail. This candidate starts out with a millstone around his neck. The establishment has a great deal to lose if this movement catches on in a big way. They are fighting for their political lives and it shows. Dr. Paul was treated so unfairly that it is frightening. It scares me to know that the media has so bought into the status quo. We need to keep up, get involved, and continue the Revolution.

Yeah, I think that pretty much sums things up quite nicely.

crazyfingers
03-14-2008, 12:09 PM
Hahaha... geez... now I know how these rumors get started!

The FEC reports do not break out individuals' salaries from expense reimbursements. So in other words, suppose we get Ron a private jet and reserve it using Kent's credit card. Kent needs to be reimbursed that money so that he can pay back his credit card bill. So Kent was not being paid $48,000 in a month... that includes a huge amount of reimbursements. The same goes for Lew and many others on our staff. Hope that helps!

Well, that's good to hear. Still it seems to be a very odd accounting practice. Some reimbursements are to be expected, but one would think the campaign would have a "corporate" credit card for general use, especially major expenditures such as reserving a jet. I obviously don't know how these things work, though.

gilliganscorner
03-14-2008, 12:22 PM
Well, that's good to hear. Still it seems to be a very odd accounting practice. Some reimbursements are to be expected, but one would think the campaign would have a "corporate" credit card for general use, especially major expenditures such as reserving a jet. I obviously don't know how these things work, though.

I can tell you first hand that the corporate credit cards issued to employees in my company operate in this manner:

All debts incurred on the card are your personal liability. It is your responsibility to pay them off, whether or not your company reimburses you. It is a way the card issuer gets around the limited liability aspect of a corporation. If the debt is incurred on the corporations name, and the company goes belly up, the issuer pursues you for the debt.

You usually end up taking the card, as you need it to conduct business or it might even be a "condition of employment".

My two cents. Be careful.

stevedasbach
03-14-2008, 12:25 PM
Ooh, now we're getting into some red meat... haha. This one might take awhile.

1. National campaign ads. I think the reason this wasn't done is because it largely didn't make sense for a candidate like Ron. While we raised $20M in Q4, keep in mind how much the other candidates had spent before that. Mitt Romne spent MILLIONS to bring his name recognition up to snuff with the other candidates. Everyone knew Rudy from 9/11, they knew McCain from 2000, and while Huckabee was an unknown like Ron, his seemingly genuine personality infatuated the press. But many members of the press didn't care about Ron, and they didn't take him seriously. I don't believe that even people like Tucker, who gave Ron above-average face-time and believed strongly in Ron's message, ever thought he had a chance of winning. That said, with limited resources, you have to target them. And the campaign worked hard at targeting early primary states, while still organizing supporters everywhere else. But to throw money across the country would not have been smart (in my opinion), and I'd rather see more direct mail in New Hampshire than TV ads playing in New Mexico and Kentucky.


This was, IMO, the major strategic error that the campaign made. The campaign invested millions of dollars in direct mail in New Hampshire, but that investment didn't show up in votes. I firmly believe this was because Ron was relatively invisible in the media, so people assumed that he didn't have a chance of winning.

That same money invested in paid TV ads, ideally on the news channels, would have forced the news channels to pay attention to Ron's campaign. Otherwise, they would have looked stupid ignoring a candidate who was running ads in every commercial break. The combination of the ads plus the resulting coverage would have helped dispel the notion that Ron didn't have a chance and that voting for him was a "wasted vote".

If Ron had launched a national ad campaign on Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC after the second money bomb, he would have been the first candidate to run national advertising. That would have been a story. Plus, seeing ads running nationally would have gotten people, especially new donors, to open up their checkbooks and donate more money to keep the ads running. And, it would have pushed Ron's national poll numbers into double digits, competitive with the other candidates.

I understand why the campaign focused on direct mail, given their experiences in Ron's Texas Congressional races, but direct mail only works for a candidate who is assumed to have a chance of winning. IMO, overcoming the "wasted vote" hurdle should have been our top priority, and in the absense of MSM coverage, paid TV advertising was the only way to accomplish it.

gilliganscorner
03-14-2008, 12:29 PM
This was, IMO, the major strategic error that the campaign made. The campaign invested millions of dollars in direct mail in New Hampshire, but that investment didn't show up in votes. I firmly believe this was because Ron was relatively invisible in the media, so people assumed that he didn't have a chance of winning.

That same money invested in paid TV ads, ideally on the news channels, would have forced the news channels to pay attention to Ron's campaign. Otherwise, they would have looked stupid ignoring a candidate who was running ads in every commercial break. The combination of the ads plus the resulting coverage would have helped dispel the notion that Ron didn't have a chance and that voting for him was a "wasted vote".

If Ron had launched a national ad campaign on Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC after the second money bomb, he would have been the first candidate to run national advertising. That would have been a story. Plus, seeing ads running nationally would have gotten people, especially new donors, to open up their checkbooks and donate more money to keep the ads running. And, it would have pushed Ron's national poll numbers into double digits, competitive with the other candidates.

I understand why the campaign focused on direct mail, given their experiences in Ron's Texas Congressional races, but direct mail only works for a candidate who is assumed to have a chance of winning. IMO, overcoming the "wasted vote" hurdle should have been our top priority, and in the absense of MSM coverage, paid TV advertising was the only way to accomplish it.

Speaking of ads,

1) Did you every try too launch an ad campaign via MSM outlets?
2) If so, did they ever refuse to run them?

JonathanBydlak
03-14-2008, 12:29 PM
This was, IMO, the major strategic error that the campaign made. The campaign invested millions of dollars in direct mail in New Hampshire, but that investment didn't show up in votes. I firmly believe this was because Ron was relatively invisible in the media, so people assumed that he didn't have a chance of winning.

That same money invested in paid TV ads, ideally on the news channels, would have forced the news channels to pay attention to Ron's campaign. Otherwise, they would have looked stupid ignoring a candidate who was running ads in every commercial break. The combination of the ads plus the resulting coverage would have helped dispel the notion that Ron didn't have a chance and that voting for him was a "wasted vote".

If Ron had launched a national ad campaign on Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC after the second money bomb, he would have been the first candidate to run national advertising. That would have been a story. Plus, seeing ads running nationally would have gotten people, especially new donors, to open up their checkbooks and donate more money to keep the ads running. And, it would have pushed Ron's national poll numbers into double digits, competitive with the other candidates.

I understand why the campaign focused on direct mail, given their experiences in Ron's Texas Congressional races, but direct mail only works for a candidate who is assumed to have a chance of winning. IMO, overcoming the "wasted vote" hurdle should have been our top priority, and in the absense of MSM coverage, paid TV advertising was the only way to accomplish it.

Yeah, I think that's probably pretty true, and I hadn't really thought of it like that before. One point of clarification though, remember that we spent millions in New Hampshire not just on direct mail, but also on TV. It's not like we sacrificed TV ads in NH to do direct mail. NH was the one place where there really were few limited on spending.

But perhaps you're right that we would have gotten a big story out of being the first candidate to run national TV ads. I still wonder, though, which does more good -- ads targeted in NH, or national ads that some people in NH would happen to see. Tough to say. And of course, keep in mind the money issue. Those national ads would have cost a fortune... were you have been willing to sacrifice competing in Iowa to run them?

Don
03-14-2008, 12:30 PM
Hey Jonathon - I certainly don't want to steal your thunder with so much way overdue Jonathon loving going on. Those of us who have worked closely with you for these past few months know how capable and dedicated you were and are and how deserving you are of some appreciation for all of the blood, sweat and tears you have put into this effort.

I did want to address a couple of the issues that have come up in this thread however.

First - My all time favorite forum issue - Anita Andrews. The insane postulating and conspiracy mongering that came out of her employment and subsequent separation from the campaign provided hours of laugh out loud moments.

Second - With regards to questions that have been raised about our (NHQ) desire to win. I know from all of the time spent with staff from Lew and Kent, right down to the state staffers that we all desperately wanted to win.

For myself, I sold my car, put everything I own in storage and moved 2500 miles across the country to spend 8 months sleeping on an air mattress in an empty room separated from family, friends and the city that I love (Seattle). I never would have done that for an "educational" exercise.

The notions sometime propagated on the forums that we just didn't want it bad enough has been far more offensive than any personal attacks that have been leveled. My mantra from the first day I arrived in DC was that the only purpose of elective politics is to obtain or retain political power. My sense is that most everyone working on this campaign feels the same way which is why we have turned our attention now to laying the groundwork for future electoral successes. It is also why I share Ron's opinion that a 3rd party or independent run would be counter-productive.

Thanks again Jonathon for your friendship and leadership and thank you to everyone on this thread for the much needed, level-headed and mature discussion of these issues. I think this conversation is invaluable.

JonathanBydlak
03-14-2008, 12:32 PM
Speaking of ads,

1) Did you every try too launch an ad campaign via MSM outlets?
2) If so, did they ever refuse to run them?

To my knowledge, we didn't do anything on a network basis.

I'd just like to add one comment here... I still believe that all this discussion of ad strategy is missing the bigger point. Other candidates earned tons of earned media, and so they didn't need to run as many ads. And more importantly, earned media offers another benefit that ads don't -- perceived credibility. With Ron not going to say anything outlandish just to make news, does anyone have any ideas on things that we could have done to get more earned media?

It's the earned media, and particularly on the major nightly network news, that I think we were having the most difficulty with. How do you crack that nut?

stevedasbach
03-14-2008, 12:33 PM
Speaking of ads,

1) Did you every try too launch an ad campaign via MSM outlets?
2) If so, did they ever refuse to run them?

They can't reject campaign ads, unless they reject all ads for that office by all candidates. They can't dictate the content of campaign ads.

There are some limited caveats to this (which is why attack ads always include documentation backing up the attacks) but for all practical purposes, they run the ads they are given.

JonathanBydlak
03-14-2008, 12:33 PM
Hey Jonathon - I certainly don't want to steal your thunder with so much way overdue Jonathon loving going on. Those of us who have worked closely with you for these past few months know how capable and dedicated you were and are and how deserving you are of some appreciation for all of the blood, sweat and tears you have put into this effort.

I did want to address a couple of the issues that have come up in this thread however.

First - My all time favorite forum issue - Anita Andrews. The insane postulating and conspiracy mongering that came out of her employment and subsequent separation from the campaign provided hours of laugh out loud moments.

Second - With regards to questions that have been raised about our (NHQ) desire to win. I know from all of the time spent with staff from Lew and Kent, right down to the state staffers that we all desperately wanted to win.

For myself, I sold my car, put everything I own in storage and moved 2500 miles across the country to spend 8 months sleeping on an air mattress in an empty room separated from family, friends and the city that I love (Seattle). I never would have done that for an "educational" exercise.

The notions sometime propagated on the forums that we just didn't want it bad enough has been far more offensive than any personal attacks that have been leveled. My mantra from the first day I arrived in DC was that the only purpose of elective politics is to obtain or retain political power. My sense is that most everyone working on this campaign feels the same way which is why we have turned our attention now to laying the groundwork for future electoral successes. It is also why I share Ron's opinion that a 3rd party or independent run would be counter-productive.

Thanks again Jonathon for your friendship and leadership and thank you to everyone on this thread for the much needed, level-headed and mature discussion of these issues. I think this conversation is invaluable.

Aww, let's all heap some love on Don, too, OK? :D

stevedasbach
03-14-2008, 12:36 PM
To my knowledge, we didn't do anything on a network basis.

I'd just like to add one comment here... I still believe that all this discussion of ad strategy is missing the bigger point. Other candidates earned tons of earned media, and so they didn't need to run as many ads. And more importantly, earned media offers another benefit that ads don't -- perceived credibility. With Ron not going to say anything outlandish just to make news, does anyone have any ideas on things that we could have done to get more earned media?

It's the earned media, and particularly on the major nightly network news, that I think we were having the most difficulty with. How do you crack that nut?

IMO, launching a major national ad campaign in December, before any of the other candidates, initially using the funds raised in the money bombs, would have forced the MSM to take Ron seriously and generated the earned media we needed. Bottom line -- money talks, and if you are spending big bucks advertising on their networks, they are going to cover you. You may or may not like the coverage, but you'll get covered.

BUSHLIED
03-14-2008, 12:44 PM
Jon,

Thanks for your work at the campaign.

I have a question. Do you know what the campaign will do with the existing website? Before you leave I would recommend to Kent or Lew that the website be kept online and turned into an educational tool. The campaign should be able to allocate some funds to use it after the convention.

Also, if you don't mind telling, what is the campaign staff narrowed down to? IS Ron going to make it to PA to speak?

Thanks.

Paul.Bearer.of.Injustice
03-14-2008, 12:45 PM
Jonathan, what's next for you?

stevedasbach
03-14-2008, 12:46 PM
Yeah, I think that's probably pretty true, and I hadn't really thought of it like that before. One point of clarification though, remember that we spent millions in New Hampshire not just on direct mail, but also on TV. It's not like we sacrificed TV ads in NH to do direct mail. NH was the one place where there really were few limited on spending.

But perhaps you're right that we would have gotten a big story out of being the first candidate to run national TV ads. I still wonder, though, which does more good -- ads targeted in NH, or national ads that some people in NH would happen to see. Tough to say. And of course, keep in mind the money issue. Those national ads would have cost a fortune... were you have been willing to sacrifice competing in Iowa to run them?

National cable ads (Fox News, CNN, MSNBC) are a lot less expensive than you think. And, IMO, once people started seeing them, the money to run more of them would have poured in. This assumes, of course, that they were effective, powerful ads.

Targetted ads in NH were important, but they were competing with the ads from every other candidate. National ads would have been up against no competition, and would almost certainly have driven up Ron's national poll numbers. The MSM used those low single digit poll numbers as the justification for marginalizing his campaign. If he had been polling in the teens, it would have been much harder for them to deny him coverage. Ultimately, I think better national poll numbers and MSM coverage would have had more impact in Iowa and New Hampshire than targeted ads with low national poll numbers and little MSM coverage.

gilliganscorner
03-14-2008, 12:47 PM
To my knowledge, we didn't do anything on a network basis.

I'd just like to add one comment here... I still believe that all this discussion of ad strategy is missing the bigger point. Other candidates earned tons of earned media, and so they didn't need to run as many ads. And more importantly, earned media offers another benefit that ads don't -- perceived credibility. With Ron not going to say anything outlandish just to make news, does anyone have any ideas on things that we could have done to get more earned media?

It's the earned media, and particularly on the major nightly network news, that I think we were having the most difficulty with. How do you crack that nut?

That one I am sympathetic to you on. The media tried to marginalize Dr. Paul in every way. Even when Nader announced his run, Wolf Blitzer asked his viewers in a blog (http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/02/25/blitzer-how-much-time-should-nader-get/) on how much time Nader should get, pretty much confessing the media decides who gets how much air time.

All I can offer is that the media's Prime directive is to bring the audience to the advertiser

They need stories that:


Do not require extensive investigation.
Are quick to compile to meet deadlines.
Easily verified to avoid lawsuits.
That will be “interesting” to the viewer/reader. This is why Britney/Lindsay/Paris stories are easy pablum as opposed to the stuff that makes people think.
Not jeopardize current or potential advertising contracts that may paint their sponsors in a negative light. Remember the White House spent 1.6 Billion of taxpayers dollars just for media relations/PR spin (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/13/AR2006021301897.html).
Not anger their editors or corporate owner’s views.


Couple that with your average voter being dumbed down over years and years of mass disinformation and manipulation tactics, they have been reduced to this:

http://gilliganscorner.files.wordpress.com/2007/11/n575942039_452871_5652.jpg

Bottom line, they either like you or they don't. Remember that they have been saturated in the same pablum over the years and they actually think they are practicing quality journalism. For example, Ron Paul repeatedly stated that the money is printed "out of thin air". Now, I know what he means, and we on these forums generally know what he means, but where the hell was a reporter asking Dr. Paul the question, "Dr. Paul? Can you take a moment to explain to our [reader|viewer]ship to elaborate on that? What do mean "printing it out of thin air"?".


I know some personalities that went into journalism, and quite frankly, I found them to be intellectual vacuums.

In case I forget to say thank you.....Thank you!

silverhandorder
03-14-2008, 12:48 PM
It makes me glad the national campaign people are here on RPF. This helps us to put many rumors to rest and get some working order back here. I am sure many people would like to know what you have to say and 57 posts is probably more then any of us herd in a while about the state of the movement outside of our local zone.

/raise a mug to Jonathan and Don

crazyfingers
03-14-2008, 12:48 PM
I can tell you first hand that the corporate credit cards issued to employees in my company operate in this manner:

All debts incurred on the card are your personal liability. It is your responsibility to pay them off, whether or not your company reimburses you. It is a way the card issuer gets around the limited liability aspect of a corporation. If the debt is incurred on the corporations name, and the company goes belly up, the issuer pursues you for the debt.

You usually end up taking the card, as you need it to conduct business or it might even be a "condition of employment".

My two cents. Be careful.

Thank you for the clarification on this. It does make perfect sense. I just hope donor morale wasn't hurt by the (false) perception that the people at the top were getting rich off of the campaign. Just goes to show that the publicly available FEC reports can't be relied on for much.

stevedasbach
03-14-2008, 12:50 PM
It makes me glad the national campaign people are here on RPF. This helps us to put many rumors to rest and get some working order back here. I am sure many people would like to know what you have to say and 57 posts is probably more then any of us herd about the state of the movement outside of our local zone.

/raise a mug to Jonathan and Don

I'll drink to that! :)

me3
03-14-2008, 12:59 PM
Jonathan,

1) Thank you very much.

2) The quality and honesty of your answers are the most refreshing I have read or heard from HQ. While I am somewhat kidding by writing this, it would have done wonders for morale if you had left the campaign after NH and come to the forums to share some insight.

3) Are you planning to get involved with other campaigns, now or in the future?

4) What did the grassroots do well (besides fund raising)

5) What could the grassroots done better?


Man, you guys just keep the questions coming...

....

Thanks so much for your insightful questions.
I'm also impressed by the insight (and respectfulness) of the questions, but your answers as well.

TruthAtLast
03-14-2008, 01:20 PM
Hello Jonathan,

Thanks for your time to shed light on these subjects. It has taken awhile to read this entire thread to make sure I wouldn't be asking questions that were already asked.

It is easy to look back and see what we would do differently and point fingers, but myself and many others are looking to see where we go from here. Here are a couple questions and comments that I may be asking on the behalf of many.


Knowing what we know now, what would it take to win in 2012? What could we do differently that would enable us to succeed where we previously failed?

You mention not having enough money EARLY in the campaign. It is hard to raise that kind of money quickly but what could we do with proper planning? Would $100 million in funds prior to Iowa and New Hampshire help? We can raise the money, but we need goals to shoot for and a plan of how to attain those goals. I don't think people should underestimate what Ron's supporters would do if he would just ask them.
Professional advertising agencies etc?

Ron Paul talks about the "next phase" of the Revolution but is he planning to lead it?

Is the next phase going through his LPAC?
When are they going to update the site and really turn it into a serious tool for change? If this was the next phase, as he suggests, then why isn't he prepared?
Would the same people be running the LPAC as those who ran the National Campaign?

There are many liberty candidates running for Congress yet Ron Paul has only endorsed a couple. How do we know who to support?

Is Ron Paul planning on identifying "opportunities" to get people elected in certain districts where there are real opportunities to win?
Some supporters in these forums are running for Congress yet they have a hard time raising funds because some Ron Paul supporters are reluctant to donate to people Ron Paul hasn't endorsed. What would be your advice to these Ron Paul loyalists who are taking up the cause and doing exactly what Ron Paul wants them to do?

If Ron Paul doesn't run again in 2012, do we need to start grooming a potential candidate now?

Is there anyone in mind? Sabrin? Rand?

Does Ron really realize what he has gotten himself into and the power he has in pushing this movement forward? As much as Ron Paul has said that the Movement is bigger than one man, people still tie his name to this "Revolution" and respond to him and him alone. He sends an email asking for money and 24 hours later nearly $1 million drops into his Congressional piggy bank. He has access to these supporters from the donations list but if his intention is to step back and let the Revolution grow without central leadership, it leaves many Grassroots organizations in a difficult position of trying to reach these supporters that really only Ron can do.
Why has there been a lack of information on how the delegate process works in each state as well as how the RNC works? I know it is different in each state but a lot of time and energy has been wasted here in the forums by people aruging about how many "REAL" delegates we have, or who is bound or unbound, or where Huck's and Romney's delegates go, or how each state actually selects National delegates, or how we could covertly "take over" the convention with stealth votes.... it goes on and on, and this leadership and defacto information should have come from HQ.

Do you think that this knowledge is of vital importance in a future election? Was there ever a "master plan" for delegates from the very beginning?
Ron Paul talks about not being able to win the nomination at this point but still suggesting that we go out and get as many delegats as possible. Some people here insist that we can still take over the convention. Could you shed some light on just what the heck the true goal is for HQ?

There are other Movements that support many of Ron Paul's beliefs and values such as Freedom Force, founded by G. Edward Griffin. They have endorsed Ron Paul and also believe in taking over the power centers in society to win back our country. Do you know how Ron Paul feels about some of these organizations? If not endorsing them specifically, does he want to work with any of them?
Clearly education is a major obstacle and it isn't easy for people UNBRAINWASH those that have been eating the Government's and MSM's hand for so long. After this campaign is over, and as we prepare for Congressional races and another presidential run, is there plans for a REAL campaign strategy to "wake up" America to these issues? Certainly the Grassroots people can do their job but a lot of times, BECAUSE there isn't a central leadership that at least provides basic direction, even the many Grassroots supporters who are spreading the message of liberty are spouting false information or just haven't done the research themselves? Ron Paul and you have proven the ability to raise money so I believe that significant funds could be raised for something like this if promoted properly. As you know, people need to feel like they are working towards a goal. They need to feel like they aren't just donating to donate, that it is a specific cause with measurable results. I guess my question is really.... how do we lay the ground work (other than just going to Republican meetings) so that the "message" would be better received in a few years?

Ninja Homer
03-14-2008, 01:30 PM
Jonathan, thanks for answering so many questions in this thread.

I know that most of your answers are written with retrospective 20/20 vision, and a lot of it doesn't matter a whole lot now, except what can be learned for future campaigns in continuing the Revolution, but I still have some questions anyway.

Why oh why didn't the campaign ever make a DVD? Why why why? WHY?

(why?) I just don't see any downside to making a DVD. With a simple email like, "We need $300,000 to produce the DVD everybody has been waiting for. Please donate now." the campaign likely would have gotten the money to produce it in a couple days. Sell it from the online store, and now you're making money on it. Give reproduction rights, and supporters can make copies themselves and pass out as needed. Put it on Google Video and now anybody can see it online for free. An official DVD always seemed to be a no-brainer to me.

I don't mean to downplay the campaign's successes. I actually remain quite optimistic about the campaign. I think the campaign has been pretty miraculous so far, and I feel there are still some miracles to come. However, there are some failures that need to be pointed out and examined so the same mistakes aren't made in the future.

The campaign failed as a traditional business that spreads its popularity by purchasing advertising. Obviously, this wasn't a fair fight. The amount of money that Ron Paul raised was a drop in an ocean compared to the free media that other candidates like McCain and Huckabee got. I'd guess that even before Super Tuesday, McCain and Huckabee were getting $5 million a day in free media, and that's probably grossly underestimated.

It should have been recognized early on that the Ron Paul Campaign wasn't going to get any free attention from the media, and wouldn't be able to compete with the other campaigns that were getting this attention. At that time, the campaign should have shifted from purchasing advertising to a campaign built more like a network marketing business.

Set up tools, such as DVD's, training videos, web tools, etc., and then the established supporters could use these tools to spread the message much faster and much more effectively than any direct ad buys. Set up training sessions and conference calls to train supporters to convert people better. This is the only way the Ron Paul campaign could have competed with the other campaigns that were getting all the free media attention. I would guess that at least 3/4 of the current Ron Paul supporters learned of him by word of mouth. This is where the bulk of the money that was raised should have been spent.

Personally, I wouldn't have spent a cent on media advertising, unless there was a particular media company that gave fair time to Ron Paul. Then I'd be tempted to reward them with some advertising dollars, and put out a press release that they're getting some money from the Ron Paul campaign because they were the only ones who gave Ron Paul fair time.

Another way I think the campaign failed was shifting gears from a message campaign to an all-out presidential campaign. It never quite made that jump, and instead was almost like a Tancredo campaign on steroids. You've addressed this a little already in this thread, so I'll leave it at that.

The last way I feel it failed is actually Ron Paul's fault... I don't think he ever believed in the possibility that he could be President as much as we did. I don't want to second-guess him or put words in his mouth, but this is the feeling I get. Don't get me wrong, Ron Paul is my hero, and is the only hero I've had that isn't a fictional character, and I have a tremendous amount of respect for him. However, from his mannerisms and the way he spoke about some things, it was apparent to me that he didn't believe he could be President, and that's something that people can sense nonverbally. Until he really believes it himself, it would be very hard for many people to believe in him. I'm not sure if I'm explaining this clear enough. At some point, Ron Paul needed to OWN this Presidency within his heart.

JonathanBydlak
03-14-2008, 01:32 PM
IMO, launching a major national ad campaign in December, before any of the other candidates, initially using the funds raised in the money bombs, would have forced the MSM to take Ron seriously and generated the earned media we needed. Bottom line -- money talks, and if you are spending big bucks advertising on their networks, they are going to cover you. You may or may not like the coverage, but you'll get covered.

That's possible, assuming that there's enough demand from the American public to hear about Ron Paul.

JonathanBydlak
03-14-2008, 01:34 PM
Jon,

Thanks for your work at the campaign.

I have a question. Do you know what the campaign will do with the existing website? Before you leave I would recommend to Kent or Lew that the website be kept online and turned into an educational tool. The campaign should be able to allocate some funds to use it after the convention.

Also, if you don't mind telling, what is the campaign staff narrowed down to? IS Ron going to make it to PA to speak?

Thanks.

Yeah, I'm not sure how the website is going to be used. I'm pretty sure though, that everyone know's it's a valuable resource that should be put to some constructive use.

The HQ office has roughly 10 employees, and as far as I know, Ron will be going to Pennsylvania. From what I've head, he's very excited about doing campaigning in his home state!

Kludge
03-14-2008, 01:35 PM
There have been a number of excellent grassroots DVDs already released... My personal favorite was "Ron Paul - A Man for All Seasons" which is set up very professionally and uses great clips (This was released well before the primaries).

JonathanBydlak
03-14-2008, 01:36 PM
Jonathan, what's next for you?

Well, I'm not 100% sure if it's going to work yet, but I'm working on creating a market-based charity dedicated to education. If anyone has any interest in finding out more, just let me know. I could use some web development help, as well as someone with experience in non-profit law...

JonathanBydlak
03-14-2008, 01:38 PM
That one I am sympathetic to you on. The media tried to marginalize Dr. Paul in every way. Even when Nader announced his run, Wolf Blitzer asked his viewers in a blog (http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/02/25/blitzer-how-much-time-should-nader-get/) on how much time Nader should get, pretty much confessing the media decides who gets how much air time.

All I can offer is that the media's Prime directive is to bring the audience to the advertiser

They need stories that:


Do not require extensive investigation.
Are quick to compile to meet deadlines.
Easily verified to avoid lawsuits.
That will be “interesting” to the viewer/reader. This is why Britney/Lindsay/Paris stories are easy pablum as opposed to the stuff that makes people think.
Not jeopardize current or potential advertising contracts that may paint their sponsors in a negative light. Remember the White House spent 1.6 Billion of taxpayers dollars just for media relations/PR spin (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/13/AR2006021301897.html).
Not anger their editors or corporate owner’s views.


Couple that with your average voter being dumbed down over years and years of mass disinformation and manipulation tactics, they have been reduced to this:

http://gilliganscorner.files.wordpress.com/2007/11/n575942039_452871_5652.jpg

Bottom line, they either like you or they don't. Remember that they have been saturated in the same pablum over the years and they actually think they are practicing quality journalism. For example, Ron Paul repeatedly stated that the money is printed "out of thin air". Now, I know what he means, and we on these forums generally know what he means, but where the hell was a reporter asking Dr. Paul the question, "Dr. Paul? Can you take a moment to explain to our [reader|viewer]ship to elaborate on that? What do mean "printing it out of thin air"?".


I know some personalities that went into journalism, and quite frankly, I found them to be intellectual vacuums.

In case I forget to say thank you.....Thank you!

Thanks... that's overall pretty insightful.

JonathanBydlak
03-14-2008, 01:38 PM
National cable ads (Fox News, CNN, MSNBC) are a lot less expensive than you think. And, IMO, once people started seeing them, the money to run more of them would have poured in. This assumes, of course, that they were effective, powerful ads.

Targetted ads in NH were important, but they were competing with the ads from every other candidate. National ads would have been up against no competition, and would almost certainly have driven up Ron's national poll numbers. The MSM used those low single digit poll numbers as the justification for marginalizing his campaign. If he had been polling in the teens, it would have been much harder for them to deny him coverage. Ultimately, I think better national poll numbers and MSM coverage would have had more impact in Iowa and New Hampshire than targeted ads with low national poll numbers and little MSM coverage.

Makes sense to me. I'll admit I didn't see it that way at the time.

Santana28
03-14-2008, 01:38 PM
Jonathan,

Just want to say thank you while i have the chance. I think you'd done an amazing job and you know you will always have our support.

greenspj
03-14-2008, 01:43 PM
Well, if you want my honest opinion, I don't think there's much that "we" can do. I think it comes down to two things... what the media wants to cover, and shortcomings of Ron. The media wants news, plain and simple. Sure, there was bias against Ron, but that was minor next to the point that Ron wasn't attacking other candidates by saying controversial things (remember the one time Ron called out Huckabee's Christmas ad? We got news coverage everywhere because of that. Why? Because it was controversial.)

So, it's a sad indictment of our society when substance doesn't get you news coverage. But my personal opinion is knowing that, you have to play the game. And unfortuantely, Ron is too dignified to do that.


If I could be so bold as to add to John's response.

Politics is war by other means. If you bring the numbers and the brute force, the media will notice. I.e. by canvassing and becoming PCs, by getting elected to county central committees, by taking over the conventions, it doesn't matter if you're the media darling - you win.

We had a year to do it. Some caught on and gave 110%. Some more. We are still doing incredible things across the west in terms of penetrating and getting elected to state delegate positions and county central committees.. That's in progress still as I type this.

Ask yourself... when was the last county central committee meeting you attended? Are you a PC?

Again, we had a year to do it. A lot of people in the movement were self-styled national campaign experts, but wouldn't knock on their next door neighbor's door. Those who focused locally and got the grassroots work done had the best results by far in terms of penetrating the party and creating wins where they were needed in the central committees, caucuses and conventions.

Best Regards,

Jeff Greenspan
(formerly) SW US Regional Campaign Coordinator, currently in Reno preparing to kick *** at the Washoe county convention tomorrow where we will get at least double the proportion of state delegates than we received votes in in the caucus and the establishment is worried (because they are under orders from the RNC to not let one RP national delegate through to the natl convention!) :)

JonathanBydlak
03-14-2008, 01:54 PM
Jonathan,

1) Thank you very much.

2) The quality and honesty of your answers are the most refreshing I have read or heard from HQ. While I am somewhat kidding by writing this, it would have done wonders for morale if you had left the campaign after NH and come to the forums to share some insight.

3) Are you planning to get involved with other campaigns, now or in the future?

4) What did the grassroots do well (besides fund raising)

5) What could the grassroots done better?


I'm also impressed by the insight (and respectfulness) of the questions, but your answers as well.

Sure, let me try my best on these. I'd love to get involved in other campaigns in the future, but it will really have to be a candidate that I believe is genuine. I think I mentioned in one of those press conferences that in this election, the Ron Paul campaign is the only campaign for me. We'll just have to see what happens in the future.

As I just said in another post, I'm currently trying to get a market-based non-profit of my own off the ground (unrelated to politics). It's geared towards trying to help students who need financial aid from college get what they need. I actually think a lot of people in these forums would find it quite interesting. That said, it's in the very early stages.

As far as what the grassroots did well and could have done better... Well, it's hard for me to be really specific, having been removed from the grassroots for quite some time. On the fundraising side, the internet organization that was done was extremely awesome, and of course, I see the way that Justine and Kent decentralized our social networking apparatus as having made all that possible. We had no idea how any of it would turn out, but man did you all make the most of it.

The general problem that I've had with many grassroots supporters is an attitudinal one. Sometimes, I think these forums have served as a sounding board for every one person's little gripes, and that resulted in pulling others into the negativity camp, rather than taking constructive action. It's sort of like group polarization theory in psychology, where groups discussing things often get pulled to the extremes and reach conclusions drastically different than what any individual might have decided otherwise. Reminds me of 12 Angry Men.... 40,000 Angry Forums Posters :D

I think things like sign waves were largely a waste of time. I'd be curious to know how many people spent their time going to Republican party meetings and working to get out the vote on election day. Not to be too critical, but I do think it's unfortunate that we have 250,000+ donors, but only 20,000 precinct leaders. And how many precinct leaders actually did canvassing?

But on the positive side, the grassroots also did something way more important that no one else talks about.. they gave Ron Paul brand recognition. People saw signs (though one critique I have heard is that they couldn't associate a face or even the word "president" when they saw "Ron Paul Revolution" signs), and they also saw Ron all over the internet. To people who cared, the grassroots provided lots of information online.

And let's not forget the turnout by supporters to straw polls, which got us a good amount of press... and text messaging polls... sure, these things aren't hugely important, but it was important in that it gave people a talking point about Ron Paul.

I think what needs to come next is learning what works and what doesn't work, and then going out and organizing to accomplish our mutual goals. It'll be a strong test of everyone involved in the revolution whether we can create the organization that we need.

BUSHLIED
03-14-2008, 01:55 PM
If I could be so bold as to add to John's response.

Politics is war by other means. If you bring the numbers and the brute force, the media will notice. I.e. by canvassing and becoming PCs, by getting elected to county central committees, by taking over the conventions, it doesn't matter if you're the media darling - you win.

We had a year to do it. Some caught on and gave 110%. Some more. We are still doing incredible things across the west in terms of penetrating and getting elected to state delegate positions and county central committees.. That's in progress still as I type this.

Ask yourself... when was the last county central committee meeting you attended? Are you a PC?

Again, we had a year to do it. A lot of people in the movement were self-styled national campaign experts, but wouldn't knock on their next door neighbor's door. Those who focused locally and got the grassroots work done had the best results by far in terms of penetrating the party and creating wins where they were needed in the central committees, caucuses and conventions.

Best Regards,

Jeff Greenspan
(formerly) SW US Regional Campaign Coordinator, currently in Reno preparing to kick *** at the Washoe county convention tomorrow where we will get at least double the proportion of state delegates than we received votes in in the caucus and the establishment is worried (because they are under orders from the RNC to not let one RP national delegate through to the natl convention!) :)
Jeff,

Is the Anti-Paul bias that flagrant? What is like out west in terms of the RNC politics? What is your guess on the amount of delegates Paul will seat?

Thanks.

steph3n
03-14-2008, 01:57 PM
Well, I'm not 100% sure if it's going to work yet, but I'm working on creating a market-based charity dedicated to education. If anyone has any interest in finding out more, just let me know. I could use some web development help, as well as someone with experience in non-profit law...

Hrm this is one of my long term desires as well, I am on the web services side of the market but my goals are really to help reform education to learning again, teaching to learn not teaching a book or teaching a test.

Shink
03-14-2008, 02:16 PM
Right now, Ron Paul will be remembered as an armchair revolutionary who happened to start a movement but then didn't know what to do with it.

I think, among all the false stuff that occasionally has floated around on RPF, this is the falsest. Perhaps you aren't aware that "armchair" connotes 'do nothing,' 'useless,' 'false.' Ron embodies the opposite of all those things. It's easy to be frustrated, but it's even easier to be dead wrong while you're frustrated.

*To Johnathan: I absolutely thank you for standing at Ron Paul's, and thus mine and this nation's, side and fighting for this most important cause.

1. From what I can tell, you were screaming inside the whole time for the attack dog version of Ron to come out, huh?

2. What exactly can or should be done about the well-known media bias? Should there be some real coordination to attempt to come up with a TV network with a focus on fair news coverage/liberty-related themes, etc?

3. Just now I listened to Ron Paul on Alex Jones. (side issue: how many of the official campaign staff actually hold venom towards AJ and people like me and Ron Paul who oppose the New World Order openly?) Ahem.... Ron was asked if he would be setting up an organization after the campaign. Ron said yes but didn't go into detail. The question: COULD YOU GO INTO DETAIL? lol

greenspj
03-14-2008, 02:28 PM
Something to think about for our the next run with the next liberty candidate. We need to win an early state to be considered legit by the MSM. Even at the expense of national fund raising, a congressional seat, etc...

Guys, there is no "we". There is only "I".

Did I canvass using best practices over a statistically significant sample size?
Did I train others how to do it in their precincts.
Did I recruit enough people to vote at the polls or support me at the caucus in my precinct?
Did I become a PC?
Did I get elected to the county central committe?
Did I recruit enough other like minded PCs?
Did I recruit enough other people to support me for my run at the county central committee and whom I could support in a run?
Did I go to my county central committee meetings?

If a bunch of "I"s don't do the above, it doesn't matter what "we" think with regards to the next liberty candidate. And the list above needs to start *now* (and I mean right now) for 2012.

Best Regards,

Jeff Greenspan

Sandra
03-14-2008, 02:32 PM
It's wonderful that you are here answering questions. Sometimes this forum can get a bit hairy.

JS4Pat
03-14-2008, 02:39 PM
he's already answered this, what works on youtube doesn't work on tv, time is pricey.

There is still no excuse for those HORRIBLE ads that ran in New Hampshire. I knew we had SERIOUS problems at HQs when those were rolled out. Honestly I was thinking sabatoge.

NEPA_Revolution
03-14-2008, 02:39 PM
I have a question. I live in NE Pennsylvania, when will Ron be here. I have never seen him in person and would really love an oppertunity to do so.

kevman657
03-14-2008, 02:42 PM
Jonathan,

First off, thank you for your service to the Ron Paul campaign and thank you for taking time out to answer our questions. I'm amazed at how sincere and honest your answers have been on this thread, you are doing a good thing by calming some uneasy supporters. With that being said, I have two questions regarding the campaign:

1. You mentioned earlier we should have had more precinct leaders, since we had so many donors. I feel, more money from the donors should have been spent to promote the precinct leader program. Maybe if y'all had brought the program in when we were holding massive fundraisers and were all hyped up, we would have been more willing to go. But we felt since the graph said "x amount needed to win", if we raised that money the campaign would use it to rise in the polls. All of the sudden, after a lot of disappointing losses, the greatest key to winning is by becoming a precinct leader. So finally, my question is, why didn't the campaign introduce the precinct leadership program earlier? If it was released earlier, why didn't the campaign do more to promote it?

2. Why didn't the campaign use more of it's funding towards educating the supporters about becoming a delegate? Every time I asked a question on the process of my state, someone on the forums would give me a link to pages and pages of various election rules. They kept telling us how easy it was, yet they couldn't give an easy way to find out. Besides, the only info I got about it was from the forums...not from the official campaign.


Again, thank you for taking your own time out to do this and for your help with the campaign.

devil21
03-14-2008, 02:47 PM
Thanks for taking the time to interact with us Jonathan!

My question: Did (does) the campaign think there was any funny business in any states with voting results (like NH)? In other words, was there any evidence to suggest vote fraud anywhere? Ive seen a lot of people suggest (esp. people that were there) that NH was stolen to kill any momentum before it got started. Paul should have come in higher based on ground support, etc. Thoughts?

yongrel
03-14-2008, 02:51 PM
There is still no excuse for those HORRIBLE ads that ran in New Hampshire. I knew we had SERIOUS problems at HQs when those were rolled out. Honestly I was thinking sabatoge.

Jonathan has already patiently answered the question of sabotage. The answer, as I recall, was "no, there was none."

OptionsTrader
03-14-2008, 03:22 PM
Man, I wanted to see that Ron so many times, too! I think that one of the things that Ron has trouble with is that he doesn't want to pander at all. While that makes him so appealing to me personally, it also leads him not to tailor his message to his audience, which in my opinion is very different than pandering. I see that as rule number 1 of giving a speech or writing a paper.

But Dr. Paul doesn't see things that way. He believes issues like monetary policy and flawed Iraq policy are so critical that everyone needs to hear about them, regardless of whether he's speaking to a group of students, South Carolina veterans, or Silicon Valley software entrepreneurs. While that's admirable, I've got to say, it just doesn't win elections.

It's not too late. He has 235 more days to relentlessly attack the other 3 frauds. A family in a country floating on oil is going to have their home destroyed next year if he doesn't go on the attack. It is not too late to get fired up Dr. Paul.

I love him either way and deeply respect him. But man, I wish he would do a Ronald Reagan "I PAID FOR THIS MICROPHONE" moment and enter the attack phase.

CAN NO ONE CONVINCE HIM THAT GOING ON THE ATTACK IS NECESSARY?

greenspj
03-14-2008, 03:29 PM
Jeff,

Is the Anti-Paul bias that flagrant? What is like out west in terms of the RNC politics? What is your guess on the amount of delegates Paul will seat?

Thanks.


To repeat, the RNC is instructing state parties to not let one single RP national delegate through to the convention.

And to repeat, politics is war by other means (refer back to my previous post.)

Jeff :)

Banana
03-14-2008, 03:38 PM
To repeat, the RNC is instructing state parties to not let one single RP national delegate through to the convention.

That's a big assertion... and would be illegal AFAICT...

Can you back it up?

greenspj
03-14-2008, 03:38 PM
... and Hi Jeff, welcome to the forum.

Thank you. I did participate here a little in the past, but it was when the trolls and moles were ruling the board. I was called everything incl. a mossad agent and some other unsavoury things.

It was quite unpleasant. In some cases grassroots ire might have been merited vis-a-vis field staff. In other cases it was not.

What the moles did was leverage the legitimate ire over to where it was not merited thereby sidetracking the campaign in localities where the campaign was extremely effective. I can tell you at some points I had to spend 20%-30% of my time cleaning up after moles wreaked all kinds of havoc with the grassroots volunteers.

Which, of course, was the objective of the moles - to sidetrack effective campaigning and get them to spend cycles on inane things rather than the business of winning.

To me that was the most disappointing and hardest part of my job, because we built something really good out here in the SW US.

That being said, of those grassroots volunteers who never lost focus on grassroots work, I would call them heros. I've never met people so dedicated and hardworking - it brings tears to one's eye.

xerigen
03-14-2008, 04:49 PM
Jonathan,

What did you think of independent fundraising projects such as the blimp, letter writing projects, third party radio/tv commercials? Did you like them or would you have preferred that the money was all centralized to the official campaign?

yongrel
03-14-2008, 04:58 PM
Jonathan,

What did you think of independent fundraising projects such as the blimp, letter writing projects, third party radio/tv commercials? Did you like them or would you have preferred that the money was all centralized to the official campaign?

million dollar question

tpreitzel
03-14-2008, 05:33 PM
I think what needs to come next is learning what works and what doesn't work, and then going out and organizing to accomplish our mutual goals. It'll be a strong test of everyone involved in the revolution whether we can create the organization that we need.

As a former member of Ron's staff, your battle-tested stature should help us to establish the necessary infrastructure for the fight ahead. ;)

brooklyn
03-14-2008, 06:18 PM
jonathan,

Our local RC in Nevada said at the county convention that they would love to have RP speak at our state convention and would invite RP.
How do we make sure that happens? What avenues do we take to make sure RP "Gets ' the invite and who do we contact to see if he will come?

torchbearer
03-14-2008, 06:25 PM
As a former member of Ron's staff, your battle-tested stature should help us to establish the necessary infrastructure for the fight ahead. ;)

Our soldiers are ready and willing, Sir!
http://www.americanrevolution.com/1781-I.jpg

Matthew P.
03-14-2008, 06:28 PM
Yes, Dr. Paul could have made his message more understandable to the dunces in the media. Not sure that would have made CNN more amenable to the message though.

Well, it is all water under the bridge now.

What are the chances of Dr. Paul at least speaking at the GOP convention?

I'm not sure how much you could have "dumbed things down" for the media. I mean how much more blunt can you get than "the dollar is crashing and we can't afford to print any more money or borrow from China."? Or how about "the Constitution demands a limited government that is controlled by the people, not the other way around." ? I mean it just doesn't get any simpler. To simplify those, and other statements made by Ron Paul would have been to dilute his point or change it altogether!!

You're right though - water under the bridge.

I hope to see Ron Paul at the Convention but I wonder - even if he did show up, would they let him speak? From the little experience I have in all of this I think he would find a more thoughtful audience at the convention than he would America at large. When we participated at our local precinct, senate district and the upcoming congressional and state caucuses we have found that those in attendance are willing to listen to argumentation.

However - if you don't argue for something that should be argued for, nobody cares and a resolution or bill can be passed that is unconstitutional. The problem is that people aren't willing to think or do work. If you or I do it for them and can present it to them in a clear, perspicuous manner then they are willing to consider - how sad!

Matthew P.
03-14-2008, 06:32 PM
Jonathan,

What did you think of independent fundraising projects such as the blimp, letter writing projects, third party radio/tv commercials? Did you like them or would you have preferred that the money was all centralized to the official campaign?

I, too, am eagerly awaiting the response to this one. Though some of those efforts had obvious success, some seemed incredibly opulent (i.e. the blimp) and the funds, quite possibly could have been used in a more efficient manner. I wonder what HQ thought of that one. :rolleyes:

Banana
03-14-2008, 06:40 PM
Was hesistant to ask this here, but didn't want to make another thread, and maybe John knows more..

Why didn't Ron Paul take Political Courage Test?


Representative Ronald Ernest 'Ron' Paul repeatedly refused to provide any responses to citizens on the issues through the 2008 Political Courage Test when asked to do so by national leaders of the political parties, prominent members of the media, Project Vote Smart President Richard Kimball, and Project Vote Smart staff.

Link (http://www.votesmart.org/npat.php?can_id=296)

Note: None of other major presidential candidates did the same, but it made me wonder why.

Matthew P.
03-14-2008, 06:42 PM
Thank you for answering the questions. I have to respect that.

This is gut wrenching and heart breaking. I saw in in early July when you guys had more money than McCain that you could do well. So did the media. That is how I found out that Ron Paul was doing well. They reported the story.

I volunteered in the HQ in early August and saw the tremendous grassroots taking place. I could tell right then and there that this was a campaign with momentum. I judged the level of activity to be record breaking. Having been on many campaigns I had never seen a grassroots like this. Most campaigns spend their time and money begging people to help their campaign. Ron Paul's campaign was the opposite. People were begging to help him. I have never seen anything like it. Yet the campaign ignored and squandered this opportunity in the most horrible way.

I was expecting a great campaign outcome based on money and volunteer enthusiasm, yet I saw the problems of understaffing in the campaign in all areas and tried to do things about it. Yet most of the time the senior staff was on the road with Ron Paul instead of managing the HQ. I commented and lamented to various people about what was going on. I wrote a paper detailing the problems and some senior staff read it but probably reacted way too late months later if at all.

Having the national press team in place by November is great, but the campaign is practically over at that point if you are really trying to win.

I have to wonder if they really wanted to win race. An expert would have changed things immediately and we probably would have come in third in Iowa instead of fifth. McCain's momentum would have stalled at that point. The outcome would be very different today.

Very insightful - thank you.

I now wonder if the media blackout on Ron Paul was 2 sided.

1 - because of lack of serious organization and seizing opportunities from grassroots and,

2 - because the media hates him and is afraid of him (and is paid off at top echelons by people from places like the Fed Reserve - verifiable by the way, not conspiratory).

Anything is news if you repeat it often enough. Our MSM has a definite agenda with the "news" they broadcast. It is meant to help craft our thinking, subtly, towards our government and world events. Don't kid yourself, thinking that there is no slant - there's always a slant.

brandon
03-14-2008, 07:24 PM
Jonathon, thanks for doing this. Here is my question.

What was the deal with Don Luskin? Why did he join the campaign as an economic advisor and then leave to join the McCain campaign a week later? Furthermore, why did the campaign decide to hire two economic advisors so late in game?

furnitureguy
03-14-2008, 09:06 PM
Jonathon,

Is there a chance of a brokered convention?

Has RP given up?

Paul
Clearwater

daviddee
03-14-2008, 09:54 PM
...

pepperpete1
03-14-2008, 11:09 PM
I know that for any of us to write-in Ron Paul for our vote, he would have to file a declaration of intent. Has he done that for each state that allows write-ins. And I just saw on the SOS for MO....If a candidate runs in a primary election and loses, can the person run in the general election for the same office?

No. If a candidate files for nomination to an office and is not nominated at a primary election, that candidate cannot file a declaration of intent to be a write-in candidate for the same office at the general election. (Section 115.453(4) RSMo)

Now I have to wonder how many other states besides the six listed on the forum have these convoluted rules, where they do not just ban write-ins all together, just if you filed for nomination for the office. Geez.

Do you know if the campaign has a list of those states where it is possible to write-in Ron Paul? And will he have filed the declaration of intent?

I cannot bring myself to vote for anyone but RP. I voted for him last election and he wasn't even running, let alone file a dec. of intent.

Soccrmastr
03-14-2008, 11:29 PM
Posting in an epic thread.

kirkblitz
03-14-2008, 11:32 PM
as epic as lord of the rings!

CurtisLow
03-14-2008, 11:51 PM
my eyes hurt.......

phoenixrising
03-15-2008, 04:12 AM
why did 10 pages disappear from this thread? I was reading page 14...got locked u & now it only goes to 5???

constituent
03-15-2008, 07:49 AM
Hrm this is one of my long term desires as well, I am on the web services side of the market but my goals are really to help reform education to learning again, teaching to learn not teaching a book or teaching a test.

have you read gargantua and pantagruel?

jonathan,

what type of non-profit work are you thinking?


glad to (sorta) meet you, welcome to the forum!

New York For Paul
03-15-2008, 11:22 AM
Thanks for these comments. I'll respond to them, but I would like to sort out some things that are assertions from things that are facts.

First, you say that "the campaign ignored and squandered this opportunity in the most horrible way." Well, we did best as we knew how, and perhaps that wasn't good enough, or perhaps there are many reasons why the campaign did not result in Ron Paul being our next president. A lot of factors influence elections, and the mere existence of grassroots support does not mean that a win should have been a lock, if not for official staff. Grassroots support is only valuable if people are doing the right things. And the blame for that not always being the case, in my opinion, lies both with HQ and with individual supporters. On the one hand, we did not communicate as specifically as we could have and as frequently as we could have. But to be honest, a lot of people were more content to do signwaves than canvass their own districts. And I should know, because I was one of those signwavers before joining the campaign. So, there's plenty of blame to go around, and I don't think it's fair to heap it all on one group of people.

As far as your understaffing point... I pretty much completely agree with you there. We were very understaffed for much of the campaign. Not that I'm asking for sympathy, but you should know that most people in our office were there until past midnight on most nights. There was a stretch when my personal hours ran in the 10am - 2am range. And I was hardly the exception in that regard. So we all put in the hours to make up for that understaffing.

But, also keep in mind, again, that resources are no infinite. If we spent more on staff, someone somewhere else would be upset that they weren't seeing TV ads in their state. There are tradeoffs that needed to be made, and while I'm sure there are many that could have been made better, it's not fair for anyone to complain because we didn't have unlimited resources.

You say "Having the national press team in place by November is great, but the campaign is practically over at that point if you are really trying to win." I pretty much agree with this, too. It's hard getting everything done that needs to be done, and this was probably the biggest mistake made on the campaign. Jesse Benton was and is very able and talented at what he does, but he couldn't do it alone.

Finally, on your point about an expert changing things... would you every say "if only we could get an expert in the government, things would be instantly better"? Because I wouldn't. So why should any of us believe that the same is true with a campaign. One person in an orgnization does not make the difference that you seem to think, and it's really just a slight against the talented people who already in the campaign. That's not to say additional people wouldn't have helped -- just that I believe it's incorrect to think finding that "right person" would have won Ron Paul the election. In that regard, the one person who controlled our chances was Ron Paul himself.

I am glad you trying to put this in honest perspective. Thanks for working hard into the late night.

Good campaign management is all about tradeoffs.


If one compares this to the Dean campaign in 2004, Ron Paul was usually behind every step of the way in terms of campaign development.

Meaning that Dean was getting lots of press and momentum by early spring, was doing very well by summer time, Dean was moving into first place by fall and was running a very large operation by late fall going into the primaries. Ron Paul by contrast had a very slow start but picked up by the fall.

One expert could have changed everything if the expert had control of the campaign checkbook. An expert would have hired more people in the press area to get even better press leading to more contributions. An expert would have bolstered the fundraising department because you can't do it all yourself. An expert would have hired people to coordinate the grassroots better and purchased a larger headquarters in New Hampshire and computerized the telephone lists.

An expert would know not to try and run a national campaign right away squandering the money on states that don't have primaries for months after New Hampshire. An expert would have concentrated fire Power on Iowa and New Hampshire because if you do well in those states, your fundraising and momentum go through the roof.


Back in 1996 Phil Gramm tried to run a national campaign and failed. Pat Buchanan concentrated on early states and won New Hampshire and almost won Iowa.

IN 2008 McCain was running a national campaign, then his fundraising dried up in late spring and he laid off over fifty staffers and expensive consultants. Ron Paul had more money in the bank than John McCain. Of course that caught the attention of the media. They were great stories.

But McCain, who had no choice concentrated on the early states of Iowa and New Hampshire and put everything he had into them. He came out with the momentum. Good campaign management does matter.


During the Iowa straw poll I was defending what the campaign was doing to various other political consultants and congressmen and many disagreed with the way the campaign was being run. They did not feel the campaign was aggressive enough when they needed to be. The campaign was trying to spin away low poll numbers and poor caucus showings and poor straw poll results.

Ron Paul needed to vault ahead somewhere in a major straw poll or caucus or primary to get more attention from the electorate.

takadi
03-15-2008, 11:32 AM
This has probably been asked several times before but...

What exactly was done with ALL that money?

Along with that, alot of grassroots supporters are supremely pissed off by the way they were treated by the official campaign and some staff members.


Also, were you guys even PLANNING on even winning this thing?

Bergie Bergeron
03-15-2008, 01:08 PM
Do you know who wrote the racist newsletters?

RollOn2day
03-15-2008, 03:08 PM
Thanks for coming on the forum and talking with us Jonathan. As you can see...we deeply appreciate it.

JonathanBydlak
03-15-2008, 04:41 PM
Hello Jonathan,

Thanks for your time to shed light on these subjects. It has taken awhile to read this entire thread to make sure I wouldn't be asking questions that were already asked.

It is easy to look back and see what we would do differently and point fingers, but myself and many others are looking to see where we go from here. Here are a couple questions and comments that I may be asking on the behalf of many.


Knowing what we know now, what would it take to win in 2012? What could we do differently that would enable us to succeed where we previously failed?

You mention not having enough money EARLY in the campaign. It is hard to raise that kind of money quickly but what could we do with proper planning? Would $100 million in funds prior to Iowa and New Hampshire help? We can raise the money, but we need goals to shoot for and a plan of how to attain those goals. I don't think people should underestimate what Ron's supporters would do if he would just ask them.
Professional advertising agencies etc?

Ron Paul talks about the "next phase" of the Revolution but is he planning to lead it?

Is the next phase going through his LPAC?
When are they going to update the site and really turn it into a serious tool for change? If this was the next phase, as he suggests, then why isn't he prepared?
Would the same people be running the LPAC as those who ran the National Campaign?

There are many liberty candidates running for Congress yet Ron Paul has only endorsed a couple. How do we know who to support?

Is Ron Paul planning on identifying "opportunities" to get people elected in certain districts where there are real opportunities to win?
Some supporters in these forums are running for Congress yet they have a hard time raising funds because some Ron Paul supporters are reluctant to donate to people Ron Paul hasn't endorsed. What would be your advice to these Ron Paul loyalists who are taking up the cause and doing exactly what Ron Paul wants them to do?

If Ron Paul doesn't run again in 2012, do we need to start grooming a potential candidate now?

Is there anyone in mind? Sabrin? Rand?

Does Ron really realize what he has gotten himself into and the power he has in pushing this movement forward? As much as Ron Paul has said that the Movement is bigger than one man, people still tie his name to this "Revolution" and respond to him and him alone. He sends an email asking for money and 24 hours later nearly $1 million drops into his Congressional piggy bank. He has access to these supporters from the donations list but if his intention is to step back and let the Revolution grow without central leadership, it leaves many Grassroots organizations in a difficult position of trying to reach these supporters that really only Ron can do.
Why has there been a lack of information on how the delegate process works in each state as well as how the RNC works? I know it is different in each state but a lot of time and energy has been wasted here in the forums by people aruging about how many "REAL" delegates we have, or who is bound or unbound, or where Huck's and Romney's delegates go, or how each state actually selects National delegates, or how we could covertly "take over" the convention with stealth votes.... it goes on and on, and this leadership and defacto information should have come from HQ.

Do you think that this knowledge is of vital importance in a future election? Was there ever a "master plan" for delegates from the very beginning?
Ron Paul talks about not being able to win the nomination at this point but still suggesting that we go out and get as many delegats as possible. Some people here insist that we can still take over the convention. Could you shed some light on just what the heck the true goal is for HQ?

There are other Movements that support many of Ron Paul's beliefs and values such as Freedom Force, founded by G. Edward Griffin. They have endorsed Ron Paul and also believe in taking over the power centers in society to win back our country. Do you know how Ron Paul feels about some of these organizations? If not endorsing them specifically, does he want to work with any of them?
Clearly education is a major obstacle and it isn't easy for people UNBRAINWASH those that have been eating the Government's and MSM's hand for so long. After this campaign is over, and as we prepare for Congressional races and another presidential run, is there plans for a REAL campaign strategy to "wake up" America to these issues? Certainly the Grassroots people can do their job but a lot of times, BECAUSE there isn't a central leadership that at least provides basic direction, even the many Grassroots supporters who are spreading the message of liberty are spouting false information or just haven't done the research themselves? Ron Paul and you have proven the ability to raise money so I believe that significant funds could be raised for something like this if promoted properly. As you know, people need to feel like they are working towards a goal. They need to feel like they aren't just donating to donate, that it is a specific cause with measurable results. I guess my question is really.... how do we lay the ground work (other than just going to Republican meetings) so that the "message" would be better received in a few years?


OK, time to chug through some of your questions and comments, and so I'll start with this beast from TruthAtLast.

1. As far as what we can do in 2012.. I've addresed this a bit already, and so has my former colleague, Jeff Greenspan, but thing #1 in my mind is getting involved in Republican politics, and working to build up the base of support for our ideas. The money will come in 2012 if that base is significantly built up and well-organized.

2. The next fan of the campaign: I'm not really sure of the degree to which Ron will lead it... of course he will be involved, but I can't really speak for him in terms of the role that he will want to play. I personally hope that it does not go through LPAC. My feelings are such that LPAC is a thing of the past, and we need something new to demonstrate the strength of this movement. I would like to see something centered in the DC area that is dedicated to "fighting the beast" But I don't really get much of a say in that decision :)

I don't know that I would say that Ron is not prepared... I think that really it's just not an easy decision as to what next step makes the most sense. It's worth taking a bit of time and being reasoned about it, but like you, I hope that we will get a decision in this regard soon. I don't know who will run it, although like I said in an earlier post, my bias is that I hope many of the people from the "official" campaign are involved in it. I want something that will kick the butt of the Washington establishment, and I think being in this area is a prerequisite for that.

3. Which "liberty" candidates to support. Well, let's be honest... do I need to tell you which candidates to support? How did you find out about Ron Paul? Who told you to support him? I'd recommend doing research and deciding for yourself, because no two candidates are going to be exactly alike. Who you support and vote for is all up to you. That said, I hope (and believe) that resources will become available in the relatively near future to aid all of us in making that decision. Having information in one place, and having an organization assessing candidates according to objective criteria obviously would be very advantageous. But until then, as good libertarians, we're on our own.

As far as what Ron is planning right now, I really don't know. I know that he's been good friends with Dr. Sabrin for a long time, and so it's not surprising that he's given his support to Murray. My advice to "Ron Paul loyalists" is to spend some time explaining your beliefs and why you believe them. I think that people are smart enough to make these decisions, as long as they have some knowledge with which to make those decisions. But loyalists also need to be creative and aggressive. Ron Paul and his campaign staffers didn't have all the answers when the campaign started, and the same is likely true for people running for Congress. To candidates, I'd recommend making connections in their local Republican parties, and courting the support of fellow revolutionaries in our movement. Then just take things from there.

4. I have no idea who the 2012 candidate would/could/should be. I'd be surprised if Ron ran again, but Murray and Rand both have little experience in public office. I think the answer to this question will reveal itself over time. All I can say is, I'm glad the 2012 nominee is unlikely to be John McCain!

5. To be honest, no, I don't think Ron Paul really understand the degree to which he's "let the genie out of the bottle." But in his defense, I don't think anyone does -- I certainly am trying to make sense of all of it myself. I'm confident that Ron is going to provide the leadership that we all need, but remember... as much power as he may have, nothing happens without a large group of grassroots supporters organizing on the ground. Those grassroots supporters need to keep an open mind and take advice as its given, but beyond that, it's up to them to do the leg work.

6. I don't know why you perceive a lack of information regarding the delegate process from the campaign. I know that we've been stressing that for a long period of time, and if there are questions, state/regional coordinators, as well as HQ staff certainly were willing and interested in answering any questions that people may have. As far as "how many real delegates Ron has" and questions of this nature... those are questions that we were trying to determine in the office as well. Part of the reason we couldn't answer questions about this is because there's really no way to know before county and state conventions in caucus states take place. So any info we'd have given in this regard would just have been conjecture as well, just like the same stuff that the media has spewed out in this regard.

Sure, the delegates process is important in any election, though we still should remember that a brokered convention is always a "longshot" possibility. I don't know the degree to which there was a "master plan," but yes, all of the organization that the campaign was doing in many states was geared towards trying to earn as many delegates as possible.

As far as whether we can take over the convention... as I said in a previous response... this question is unimportant. Let's organize and get as many delegates as we can, and THEN go to the convention and see what we can get with them. None of us -- people in HQ or grassroots supporters -- have any idea what's going to happen at the convention. So why keep speculating about this? Sure, taking over the convention is relatively unlikely in this regard, but whether it's platform changes, rules changes, or whatever, we all know that the larger our numbers, the more influence we can wield. And remember, even if we don't win this year, convincing other party people of the superiority of our ideas will go a long way towards building our movement, continuing the revolution, and bettering our chances 4, 8, or more years from now.

7. I really know nothing about how Ron Paul feels about any of these other organizations, and I don't really know anything about them myself. Perhaps they're good organizations, but I really have no idea.

8. I don't know what you mean by "real campaign strategy." Obviously, we need to help re-educate people (or educate them for the first time), but that process is huge, and certainly not one that can be controlled by any centralized campaign apparatus. Yes, in my opinion, whatever organization comes out of the campaign should have this as one of its goals working on educating people. But I do not believe that "the marketplace" needs to wait to start doing that.

I must say as a final comment to you, TruthatLast, that I found a lot of your comments kind of funny. I think many of them were applying the same concept that you hold to a lot of different situations. And ironically, that concept is that you need centralized control, either in an individual or an organization, to keep this movement alive, kicking, and moving forward. While I certainly agree that centralized organization helps, I for one do not believe we should be dependent on it. We need to press forward -- with an open mind -- by determining what's effective, and then doing that grunt work. When these organizations or endorsements or leaders spring up, it's important to consider and usually take heed their advice. But I don't think we should confuse that with it being a necessity. I know that it seems annoying to hear this so much (at least that's how I sometimes feel), but there really is no substitute for getting out there and changing our county one precinct -- indeed, one person -- at a time.

JonathanBydlak
03-15-2008, 04:55 PM
Jonathan, thanks for answering so many questions in this thread.

I know that most of your answers are written with retrospective 20/20 vision, and a lot of it doesn't matter a whole lot now, except what can be learned for future campaigns in continuing the Revolution, but I still have some questions anyway.

Why oh why didn't the campaign ever make a DVD? Why why why? WHY?

(why?) I just don't see any downside to making a DVD. With a simple email like, "We need $300,000 to produce the DVD everybody has been waiting for. Please donate now." the campaign likely would have gotten the money to produce it in a couple days. Sell it from the online store, and now you're making money on it. Give reproduction rights, and supporters can make copies themselves and pass out as needed. Put it on Google Video and now anybody can see it online for free. An official DVD always seemed to be a no-brainer to me.

I don't mean to downplay the campaign's successes. I actually remain quite optimistic about the campaign. I think the campaign has been pretty miraculous so far, and I feel there are still some miracles to come. However, there are some failures that need to be pointed out and examined so the same mistakes aren't made in the future.

The campaign failed as a traditional business that spreads its popularity by purchasing advertising. Obviously, this wasn't a fair fight. The amount of money that Ron Paul raised was a drop in an ocean compared to the free media that other candidates like McCain and Huckabee got. I'd guess that even before Super Tuesday, McCain and Huckabee were getting $5 million a day in free media, and that's probably grossly underestimated.

It should have been recognized early on that the Ron Paul Campaign wasn't going to get any free attention from the media, and wouldn't be able to compete with the other campaigns that were getting this attention. At that time, the campaign should have shifted from purchasing advertising to a campaign built more like a network marketing business.

Set up tools, such as DVD's, training videos, web tools, etc., and then the established supporters could use these tools to spread the message much faster and much more effectively than any direct ad buys. Set up training sessions and conference calls to train supporters to convert people better. This is the only way the Ron Paul campaign could have competed with the other campaigns that were getting all the free media attention. I would guess that at least 3/4 of the current Ron Paul supporters learned of him by word of mouth. This is where the bulk of the money that was raised should have been spent.

Personally, I wouldn't have spent a cent on media advertising, unless there was a particular media company that gave fair time to Ron Paul. Then I'd be tempted to reward them with some advertising dollars, and put out a press release that they're getting some money from the Ron Paul campaign because they were the only ones who gave Ron Paul fair time.

Another way I think the campaign failed was shifting gears from a message campaign to an all-out presidential campaign. It never quite made that jump, and instead was almost like a Tancredo campaign on steroids. You've addressed this a little already in this thread, so I'll leave it at that.

The last way I feel it failed is actually Ron Paul's fault... I don't think he ever believed in the possibility that he could be President as much as we did. I don't want to second-guess him or put words in his mouth, but this is the feeling I get. Don't get me wrong, Ron Paul is my hero, and is the only hero I've had that isn't a fictional character, and I have a tremendous amount of respect for him. However, from his mannerisms and the way he spoke about some things, it was apparent to me that he didn't believe he could be President, and that's something that people can sense nonverbally. Until he really believes it himself, it would be very hard for many people to believe in him. I'm not sure if I'm explaining this clear enough. At some point, Ron Paul needed to OWN this Presidency within his heart.

I don't really know how to answer this question other than to say that we just couldn't do everything. Yes, obviously making a DVD made a lot of sense, though I'll admit that I didn't think about it much personally. It does seem like a no-brainer, and my memory may serve me wrong, but I thought that it was considered at some time. But I'd also like to point out that "the marketplace" went out and created good DVDs when we couldn't. And to be honest, they probably did a better job than we could have, because of copyright issues with debate footage and other legal issues of that nature. So even though one may not have come from the official campaign, I don't think a huge amount was lost in this regard.

As far as your points on McCain and Huckabee's free media, I totally agree with you. They got a ton of earned media that Ron Paul did not. As I alluded to in an earlier post, it's an interesting brainstorming exercise to think about why that was the case and whether there are things we could have done to rectify that. Your ideas on running the campaign like a network marketing business are really interesting. I had never really thought about it like that. Though I will say that I think in a lot of respects, we were doing some of the things you're talking about. We created the precinct leader program. We had multiple grassroots training videos on our website. We created YouTube videos of campaign events that could be spread online.

The shortcoming of this approach, in my opinion, is that running a campaign this way still leaves out a very significant demographic -- seniors. If you look at the polling breakdowns, Ron's support declined substantially as a function of voters' age. How would you have proposed targeting that age group more effectively? That's a question that I've wrestled with personally for months, and so far, all I've come up with is a need to better get attention on network nightly news.

As far as a message campaign vs. an all-out presidential campaign... I agree with your assessment, but I can tell you that in so much as that's the case, I don't believe it had a whole lot to do with the staff. I think most of us were very deeply committed to winning this race -- as Don said in his earlier post -- but this was something that Ron was (and still is) wrestling with. I don't know if there's much we could have done in that regard, though I certainly can understand any doubts that Ron might have had. I agree with your last paragraph's assessment entirely.

I hope this responds to all of your points.

JonathanBydlak
03-15-2008, 04:58 PM
If I could be so bold as to add to John's response.

Politics is war by other means. If you bring the numbers and the brute force, the media will notice. I.e. by canvassing and becoming PCs, by getting elected to county central committees, by taking over the conventions, it doesn't matter if you're the media darling - you win.

We had a year to do it. Some caught on and gave 110%. Some more. We are still doing incredible things across the west in terms of penetrating and getting elected to state delegate positions and county central committees.. That's in progress still as I type this.

Ask yourself... when was the last county central committee meeting you attended? Are you a PC?

Again, we had a year to do it. A lot of people in the movement were self-styled national campaign experts, but wouldn't knock on their next door neighbor's door. Those who focused locally and got the grassroots work done had the best results by far in terms of penetrating the party and creating wins where they were needed in the central committees, caucuses and conventions.

Best Regards,

Jeff Greenspan
(formerly) SW US Regional Campaign Coordinator, currently in Reno preparing to kick *** at the Washoe county convention tomorrow where we will get at least double the proportion of state delegates than we received votes in in the caucus and the establishment is worried (because they are under orders from the RNC to not let one RP national delegate through to the natl convention!) :)

I'd just like to add to Jeff's post, and say that even if we don't win this year, we have four years to prepare to the next election, whoever that candidate ends up being. Let's each individually, and yet together, lay the foundation for 2012 as much as we can.

JonathanBydlak
03-15-2008, 04:59 PM
Hrm this is one of my long term desires as well, I am on the web services side of the market but my goals are really to help reform education to learning again, teaching to learn not teaching a book or teaching a test.

Yeah, I personally have a big interest in the field of education. I have a lot of thoughts on this, but that's probably for another place :)

TruthAtLast
03-15-2008, 05:02 PM
thank you for your time and thoughtful response.

JonathanBydlak
03-15-2008, 05:11 PM
I think, among all the false stuff that occasionally has floated around on RPF, this is the falsest. Perhaps you aren't aware that "armchair" connotes 'do nothing,' 'useless,' 'false.' Ron embodies the opposite of all those things. It's easy to be frustrated, but it's even easier to be dead wrong while you're frustrated.

*To Johnathan: I absolutely thank you for standing at Ron Paul's, and thus mine and this nation's, side and fighting for this most important cause.

1. From what I can tell, you were screaming inside the whole time for the attack dog version of Ron to come out, huh?

2. What exactly can or should be done about the well-known media bias? Should there be some real coordination to attempt to come up with a TV network with a focus on fair news coverage/liberty-related themes, etc?

3. Just now I listened to Ron Paul on Alex Jones. (side issue: how many of the official campaign staff actually hold venom towards AJ and people like me and Ron Paul who oppose the New World Order openly?) Ahem.... Ron was asked if he would be setting up an organization after the campaign. Ron said yes but didn't go into detail. The question: COULD YOU GO INTO DETAIL? lol

1. Well, I definitely am a bit more aggresive in this regard than Ron is. It's so admirable that Ron stays so calm despite all of the epithets and falsehoods that are thrown his way. But my personal feeling is that he needed to respond to those better and not let them go unanswered. Doing so would have had a mulitpier effect by also generating more mainstream news.

2. I've talked about media bias in some earlier posts, and as I said there, I don't really have all the answers. I will say that I'm not personally convinced by things like coming up with TV networks or proving content or whatnot. I think it really comes down to educating as many people as we can, and utilzing all alternative means of getting the world out as we can.

3. I don't hold any venom for Alex Jones, and I can't think of anyone I know on the official campaign staff who does. I personally don't agree with many of Alex's views, but I respect them, and I think everyone else does, too. Alex was always gracious to Ron and our campaign, and I know everyone was grateful for that.

I've touched on the organization in a few other posts, and the short answer is that I really don't know what is going to be formed. I mentioned some of my personal preferences, but I have no idea what will come, or when it will come. That said, I'm confident that whatever does is going to be a very useful resource that will add a lot to the vitality and longevity of our movement.

JonathanBydlak
03-15-2008, 05:12 PM
It's wonderful that you are here answering questions. Sometimes this forum can get a bit hairy.

And believe me, if there's one person it's gotten hairy towards in the past, it's probably me! hahaha...

JonathanBydlak
03-15-2008, 05:17 PM
There is still no excuse for those HORRIBLE ads that ran in New Hampshire. I knew we had SERIOUS problems at HQs when those were rolled out. Honestly I was thinking sabatoge.

I did address this earlier, and I understand the frustrations that you and others had at the time (and still have). I personally don't think they were as bad as you think, but I don't think anyone would claim that every decision along the way that was made was the right one.

As I said earlier, though, I do think any problems with the ads are less of a problem than they are made out to be. Does anyone honestly think that Mike Huckabee won Iowa because he had Chuck Norris in his ads? Did John McCain take New Hampshire because voters there like listening to white haired men with speech impediments?

And did Rudy Giuliani win.. oh wait, wait... he didn't win anywhere. There goes that example :D

JonathanBydlak
03-15-2008, 05:18 PM
I have a question. I live in NE Pennsylvania, when will Ron be here. I have never seen him in person and would really love an oppertunity to do so.

I don't have an answer to this question. Your best bet is to call the campaign and ask what his schedule will be in the coming weeks... 703-248-9115.

JonathanBydlak
03-15-2008, 05:28 PM
Jonathan,

First off, thank you for your service to the Ron Paul campaign and thank you for taking time out to answer our questions. I'm amazed at how sincere and honest your answers have been on this thread, you are doing a good thing by calming some uneasy supporters. With that being said, I have two questions regarding the campaign:

1. You mentioned earlier we should have had more precinct leaders, since we had so many donors. I feel, more money from the donors should have been spent to promote the precinct leader program. Maybe if y'all had brought the program in when we were holding massive fundraisers and were all hyped up, we would have been more willing to go. But we felt since the graph said "x amount needed to win", if we raised that money the campaign would use it to rise in the polls. All of the sudden, after a lot of disappointing losses, the greatest key to winning is by becoming a precinct leader. So finally, my question is, why didn't the campaign introduce the precinct leadership program earlier? If it was released earlier, why didn't the campaign do more to promote it?

2. Why didn't the campaign use more of it's funding towards educating the supporters about becoming a delegate? Every time I asked a question on the process of my state, someone on the forums would give me a link to pages and pages of various election rules. They kept telling us how easy it was, yet they couldn't give an easy way to find out. Besides, the only info I got about it was from the forums...not from the official campaign.


Again, thank you for taking your own time out to do this and for your help with the campaign.

1. You're dead on with respect to this point. The honest answer is that we really didn't think of the idea or devise it until too late. I consider that a huge failing of myself for not thinking of / realizing such a program's importance earlier in the game. And I think it's one of HQ's biggest mistakes -- though I think it's interesting that I don't think I've ever heard much on the forums about that being a mistake. That said, I'll also say that the campaign has those tools now, and regardless of whether your state's primary, caucus, or convention has passed, it's worth your while to use them.

2. I addressed this in a previous post, but I think we did a lot to educate on the delegate process in various states. Did you ever see the state pages on our website? And I assure you, you could always call our office or ask your state/regional coordinator for an answer. Part of the reason I'm sure you got complex answers is because in many states, the process is very complex. Becoming a delegate may be easy, but I don't think anyone knows every state's individual rules by heart. But there definitely were resources for figuring that out.

Do you have a more specific question in this regard? I'd be happy to try to answer it myself or at least put you in touch with someone who can.

Hope that answers what you were looking for!

kevman657
03-15-2008, 05:34 PM
1. You're dead on with respect to this point. The honest answer is that we really didn't think of the idea or devise it until too late. I consider that a huge failing of myself for not thinking of / realizing such a program's importance earlier in the game. And I think it's one of HQ's biggest mistakes -- though I think it's interesting that I don't think I've ever heard much on the forums about that being a mistake. That said, I'll also say that the campaign has those tools now, and regardless of whether your state's primary, caucus, or convention has passed, it's worth your while to use them.

2. I addressed this in a previous post, but I think we did a lot to educate on the delegate process in various states. Did you ever see the state pages on our website? And I assure you, you could always call our office or ask your state/regional coordinator for an answer. Part of the reason I'm sure you got complex answers is because in many states, the process is very complex. Becoming a delegate may be easy, but I don't think anyone knows every state's individual rules by heart. But there definitely were resources for figuring that out.

Do you have a more specific question in this regard? I'd be happy to try to answer it myself or at least put you in touch with someone who can.

Hope that answers what you were looking for!

Yes, right on. I can't blame someone for not thinking of a great idea at a certain point in time, lol, at least they came up with the idea at all...




Thanks for your time.

JonathanBydlak
03-15-2008, 05:34 PM
Thanks for taking the time to interact with us Jonathan!

My question: Did (does) the campaign think there was any funny business in any states with voting results (like NH)? In other words, was there any evidence to suggest vote fraud anywhere? Ive seen a lot of people suggest (esp. people that were there) that NH was stolen to kill any momentum before it got started. Paul should have come in higher based on ground support, etc. Thoughts?

I don't believe there was any vote fraud in either Iowa or New Hampshire. I know that Ron and others looked into such allegations in New Hampshire, and concluded that nothing "funny" went on there. And I believe that the recounts that were financed confirmed that there were no significant vote discrepancies.

So while I do think interesting things happened in Louisiana, I think the real reason we didn't do well in New Hampshire is much simpler -- we just didn't have the level of support that we needed to win.

JonathanBydlak
03-15-2008, 05:37 PM
It's not too late. He has 235 more days to relentlessly attack the other 3 frauds. A family in a country floating on oil is going to have their home destroyed next year if he doesn't go on the attack. It is not too late to get fired up Dr. Paul.

I love him either way and deeply respect him. But man, I wish he would do a Ronald Reagan "I PAID FOR THIS MICROPHONE" moment and enter the attack phase.

CAN NO ONE CONVINCE HIM THAT GOING ON THE ATTACK IS NECESSARY?

funny you should mention that example... you have no idea how many times I said that same thing myself around the office :)

Of course, I wasn't born yet then... but still, all the same, right? :D

Cowlesy
03-15-2008, 05:38 PM
http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?p=1351908#post1351908

Thread above is a must-read for any of you still involved in the Ron Paul Grassroots movement.

I know, a Moderator thread-jacking is blasphemy.......but it is a must-read.

Thanks.

j650
03-15-2008, 05:39 PM
Why didn't the campaign distance itself from known kooks like Alex Jones and Don Black?

Why wasn't more money put into better quality advertisements? The first tv ad put out was terrible.

Was the goal ever to win or was it just to spread an ideal?

Why did you try and stop the money bombs from ever happening?

Fields
03-15-2008, 05:56 PM
Jonathan, thanks for shedding some light on these issues that have been bothering us for a while.

Mods, maybe we can get a disclaimer on the title of the thread that people should read through it before posting. A lot of the same questions keep coming up and I bet it's getting annoying for Jonathan to keep answering them over and over.

JonathanBydlak
03-15-2008, 06:04 PM
Jonathan,

What did you think of independent fundraising projects such as the blimp, letter writing projects, third party radio/tv commercials? Did you like them or would you have preferred that the money was all centralized to the official campaign?

Well, as yongrel said in the next post, this is the million dollar question! I'm surprised it took so long to get to it...

To give my honest opinion, no, I do not think the blimp was worth it or really all that successful. That's not to say anything about the people behind it or the organization, because all seemed very hard-working and dedicated to the movement.

But from an business perspective, I did not, and still don't, see it as a smart use of resources. To me, it was one of those ideas that sounded great in theory, and the idea of which got Ron Paul some press, but in the end was more hassle than it was worth. I say this based on a couple of things:

First, while the media covered the blimp in the beginning, it quickly lost its novelty value and the coverage -- as best as I could see -- declined. I also think that the image that the blimp provided was not all positive. People in power and in the press perceived the Ron Paul campaign as a sort of novelty campaign, and I think that the blimp played into that image. That may not be the case, it's jusy my opinion.

I also think about the other ways that the money (and time could have been spent). As someone commented earlier, we should have promoted the precinct leader program. I think using that money, whether it was in the hands of the official campaign or not, to promote things like that would have been more valuable. And the time that was spent organizing everything associated with the blimp probably would have been better spent canvassing or organizing grassroots supporters. Again, that's just my opinion... I think there were other things out there that more directly would have worked to get Ron Paul elected president.

On a more technical side, I also think that the fact that it didn't mention that Ron was running for president was a problem (though I know there were legal issues to doing so). As I mentioned in an earlier post, I also think that was an issue with the whole "Ron Paul Revolution" phraseology.

But all that said, the blimp was pretty cool! And it was interesting following it in HQ. But I don't think that it reached as many people or did as much to get Ron elected as other things would have.

I think that letter-writing campaigns were probably a pretty good use of grassroots time, because they reached likely voters, while also personalizing Ron Paul. These letter-writing campaigns were also a good way for supporters who were shy to get involved and spread Ron's message to voters. I'm not sure how many people were actually reached by these efforts, though, and again... you've got to ask whether they were more effective than, say, canvassing one's own district. Remember, all politics is local, and if we had 180,000 precinct leaders across the country, actively canvassing in their own backyards, we'd have won this election easily. To plug the book I references earlier, you might want to check out Hunter S. Thompson's On the Campaign Trail '72.

As far as third-party radio and TV ads... I don't think there's anything wrong with them per se, but I do think that they probably were pretty ineffective. That's because even if you produce the greatest ad ever, you still need to air them to a ton of people. And its those broacasting costs that make up the bulk of the costs. So unless these third party organizations were able to raise a ton of money, I doubt that the ads they aired were really effective.

And as to whether I'd have rathered the money be in HQ or in other organizations... well, obviously from a personal standpoint, I personally would have rathered that they were in HQ's hands, mainly because I believe we were spending that money reasonably efficiently. But honestly, the money should go whereever it was going to be spent most efficiently. So if the grassroots were going to spend the money better HQ, then that's where it should be. And the market of our donors were the ones who needed to determine that.

JonathanBydlak
03-15-2008, 06:07 PM
jonathan,

Our local RC in Nevada said at the county convention that they would love to have RP speak at our state convention and would invite RP.
How do we make sure that happens? What avenues do we take to make sure RP "Gets ' the invite and who do we contact to see if he will come?

Hi brooklyn,

Your best bet is to contact the campaign, and make sure that the invitation gets passed on to events coordinator Amanda Lee.

Good luck!

JonathanBydlak
03-15-2008, 06:11 PM
I'm not sure how much you could have "dumbed things down" for the media. I mean how much more blunt can you get than "the dollar is crashing and we can't afford to print any more money or borrow from China."? Or how about "the Constitution demands a limited government that is controlled by the people, not the other way around." ? I mean it just doesn't get any simpler. To simplify those, and other statements made by Ron Paul would have been to dilute his point or change it altogether!!

You're right though - water under the bridge.

I hope to see Ron Paul at the Convention but I wonder - even if he did show up, would they let him speak? From the little experience I have in all of this I think he would find a more thoughtful audience at the convention than he would America at large. When we participated at our local precinct, senate district and the upcoming congressional and state caucuses we have found that those in attendance are willing to listen to argumentation.

However - if you don't argue for something that should be argued for, nobody cares and a resolution or bill can be passed that is unconstitutional. The problem is that people aren't willing to think or do work. If you or I do it for them and can present it to them in a clear, perspicuous manner then they are willing to consider - how sad!

I think you're right that you can't dumb the message down much more, but what you can do is change the way you present it, and tailor your message better to the audience that you are speaking to.

You've hit on why it's important for Ron Paul delegates to go to the convention... to discuss our ideas with the people who control the party infrastructure. I agree with you that I have a hard time assuming that Ron will be able to speak without endorsing John McCain, but that doesn't mean that delegates can't have a huge amount of influence. In my opinion, if there are enough there, it's possible to have more influence than even Ron would be able to have.

JonathanBydlak
03-15-2008, 06:11 PM
I, too, am eagerly awaiting the response to this one. Though some of those efforts had obvious success, some seemed incredibly opulent (i.e. the blimp) and the funds, quite possibly could have been used in a more efficient manner. I wonder what HQ thought of that one. :rolleyes:

Well, I answered it just a bit ago, and your comments very succinctly summarize my personal views.

JonathanBydlak
03-15-2008, 06:15 PM
Was hesistant to ask this here, but didn't want to make another thread, and maybe John knows more..

Why didn't Ron Paul take Political Courage Test?

Link (http://www.votesmart.org/npat.php?can_id=296)

Note: None of other major presidential candidates did the same, but it made me wonder why.

I don't really know for sure, but I think there were a few reasons (some good, and some bad, in my opinion).

For one, they had answers from Ron in 1996, and as you know, Ron's views haven't changed a whole lot since then.

More important though is that the questions were very leading, and it was believed that any answers that we could have given would not have portrayed Ron's views very fairly. I may be wrong, but I think there also was some fear that this fact could have adversely affected the congressional campaign.

That's all what I remember (or think I remember at this point), so I wouldn't take that all that as sure facts... I was a little less involved on policy issues.

Cowlesy
03-15-2008, 06:20 PM
Well, as yongrel said in the next post, this is the million dollar question! I'm surprised it took so long to get to it...

To give my honest opinion, no, I do not think the blimp was worth it or really all that successful. That's not to say anything about the people behind it or the organization, because all seemed very hard-working and dedicated to the movement.

But from an business perspective, I did not, and still don't, see it as a smart use of resources. To me, it was one of those ideas that sounded great in theory, and the idea of which got Ron Paul some press, but in the end was more hassle than it was worth. I say this based on a couple of things:

First, while the media covered the blimp in the beginning, it quickly lost its novelty value and the coverage -- as best as I could see -- declined. I also think that the image that the blimp provided was not all positive. People in power and in the press perceived the Ron Paul campaign as a sort of novelty campaign, and I think that the blimp played into that image. That may not be the case, it's jusy my opinion.

I also think about the other ways that the money (and time could have been spent). As someone commented earlier, we should have promoted the precinct leader program. I think using that money, whether it was in the hands of the official campaign or not, to promote things like that would have been more valuable. And the time that was spent organizing everything associated with the blimp probably would have been better spent canvassing or organizing grassroots supporters. Again, that's just my opinion... I think there were other things out there that more directly would have worked to get Ron Paul elected president.

On a more technical side, I also think that the fact that it didn't mention that Ron was running for president was a problem (though I know there were legal issues to doing so). As I mentioned in an earlier post, I also think that was an issue with the whole "Ron Paul Revolution" phraseology.

But all that said, the blimp was pretty cool! And it was interesting following it in HQ. But I don't think that it reached as many people or did as much to get Ron elected as other things would have.

I think that letter-writing campaigns were probably a pretty good use of grassroots time, because they reached likely voters, while also personalizing Ron Paul. These letter-writing campaigns were also a good way for supporters who were shy to get involved and spread Ron's message to voters. I'm not sure how many people were actually reached by these efforts, though, and again... you've got to ask whether they were more effective than, say, canvassing one's own district. Remember, all politics is local, and if we had 180,000 precinct leaders across the country, actively canvassing in their own backyards, we'd have won this election easily. To plug the book I references earlier, you might want to check out Hunter S. Thompson's On the Campaign Trail '72.

As far as third-party radio and TV ads... I don't think there's anything wrong with them per se, but I do think that they probably were pretty ineffective. That's because even if you produce the greatest ad ever, you still need to air them to a ton of people. And its those broacasting costs that make up the bulk of the costs. So unless these third party organizations were able to raise a ton of money, I doubt that the ads they aired were really effective.

And as to whether I'd have rathered the money be in HQ or in other organizations... well, obviously from a personal standpoint, I personally would have rathered that they were in HQ's hands, mainly because I believe we were spending that money reasonably efficiently. But honestly, the money should go whereever it was going to be spent most efficiently. So if the grassroots were going to spend the money better HQ, then that's where it should be. And the market of our donors were the ones who needed to determine that.

I think the blimp was a waste of resources, but at the same time, I don't think those resources would have ever been diverted to the PCC in the first place. The $300-$400k spent on the blimp I am sure Ron still has in the bank in funds not-spent, so I don't think saying it would have been diverted to the Precinct program makes much sense. I am not saying blimp resources came from $2300 people, but my hunch is a decent chunk did.

Who knows if PCC had enough money to really do anything effectively. I don't blame JB or any of the staff. Who is to say if we had veteran campaign-experienced professionals from Campaign Manager to Fundraising Director to IT-guy those millions would have made a difference. My honest opinion is "who knows". We tried.

But the thing is, we hear tons and tons of people say "well the campaign's over, go home and suck your thumb". But just tonight, we are seeing convention victories all over the place and have been doing so for the past month I'd posit.

So we may not get the trophy, but look how many people have been brought into the political process, and due to their emotional connection to Ron Paul and the Founders' principles, they're highly unlikely to stop fighting. We are placing people in serious state conventions and in party positions of influence. This campaign is far from over.

No matter what any of you think of Ron's staff, my heart tells me they are true believers and did all they could do to promote his campaign. Look...were they amateurs in this game? Yeah, they were. But so are we. But are we making progress now at getting people into the party where they will have a chance to make a difference? Heck yes we are, and we should ask the RP Staff to join us with open arms. They are believers, and I hope they'll be part of the movement here.

JonathanBydlak
03-15-2008, 06:24 PM
Jonathon, thanks for doing this. Here is my question.

What was the deal with Don Luskin? Why did he join the campaign as an economic advisor and then leave to join the McCain campaign a week later? Furthermore, why did the campaign decide to hire two economic advisors so late in game?

Haha... if I told you what I really thought about that situation, I'd probably be banned from the forums for using foul language.

I courted and worked closely with many of the Ron Paul advisors and surrogates (Don, Peter Schiff, Glen Jacobs, Donna D'Errico, etc.), and honestly, all of them-- Don included -- were wonderful representatives of the campaign.

However, while Peter Schiff is more strongly in Dr. Paul's economic camp as an Austrian, Don Luskin was not. I think Don Luskin began to preceive that John McCain had a better chance of winning the nomination, and even though he personally told me that he would be voting for Ron come November, whether he's on the ballot or not, he felt that personally and professionally he needed to accept the offer from the McCain camp to be an economic advisor.

Obviously this was pretty irritating, especially because he had represented the campaign well, but I have no choice but to grudgingly accept and respect that decision. I wish it had worked out differently, because Don is actually a great guy and someone who I believe fits better in our camp. Then again, God knows John McCain needs the economic advice!

An aside on this point... I know it had been rumored that Don was responsible for the spending of campaign money, television ads, and other things of the like... these rumors were catagorically false. Mr Luskin worked in an unpaid advisory and surrogate role, and had no such power whatsoever.

JonathanBydlak
03-15-2008, 06:27 PM
Jonathon,

Is there a chance of a brokered convention?

Has RP given up?

Paul
Clearwater

Haha... I've addressed these about 80 times already, and being that this is your first post, does this mean I get to have the pleasure of being the first person to call you a troll?

I'm fitting in so well here! :D

Just kidding... but I have answered these already... in short... of course Ron has not given up, or else he would not stilll be in the race. The chance of a brokered convention is small, but regardless, there is still a big impact that delegates can have.

Let me know if you want me to elaborate further... my typing fingers are getting tired at this point :)

JonathanBydlak
03-15-2008, 06:29 PM
Jonathan - Thank you for coming onto the forum.

I have more of a comment than a question.

Looking back over this whole experience... I think most of us were amazed to find a presidential candidate that matched our beliefs. When I heard Ron speak for the first time I dropped what I was holding and ran to the TV. Then when I went to a fundraiser in Orlando and met Dr Paul and all of the other people it was a revelation that there are more people that truly understand what freedom is.

Words can not express my appreciation to you, the campaign, and Dr Paul.

Few things in this world bring me tears.... hearing Dr Paul is one of them... It is not necessarily Dr Paul... It is hearing the truth and knowing what the original intent of our founding documents was/is.

-DavidD

Thank you for that, David. I feel pretty much the same way. If you have any interest in reading a bit more about my experience, I wrote an article about it for my college paper: http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/2008/02/07/19983/

OptionsTrader
03-15-2008, 06:30 PM
Ditto what Cowlsey said.

The great thing about our fervent minority is that WE WILL NEVER GO TO SLEEP AGAIN.

We will all be involved in the process now and fight for and run as Ron Paul-like candidates that believe in the power of freedom, prosperity, and peace.

Obama-maniacs are not voting for PRINCIPLE, they are voting for a man for a man (history tell us that is DANGEROUS). There is no telling what kind of candidate they will support in their future. But we know what kinds of candidate we will support, and that is the growing power of this movement. As G. Edward Griffin puts it, this movement is holographic in structure with every person containing the sufficient knowledge of the principles such that even if our numbers dwindle due to oppression and the plate is shattered, light can be shown through the small piece of holographic plate and the original image will be 100% intact. Or like in genetics, every cell of this freedom organism has all of the DNA necessary to provide a blueprint to create an entire new population with the same principles.

JonathanBydlak
03-15-2008, 06:34 PM
I know that for any of us to write-in Ron Paul for our vote, he would have to file a declaration of intent. Has he done that for each state that allows write-ins. And I just saw on the SOS for MO....If a candidate runs in a primary election and loses, can the person run in the general election for the same office?

No. If a candidate files for nomination to an office and is not nominated at a primary election, that candidate cannot file a declaration of intent to be a write-in candidate for the same office at the general election. (Section 115.453(4) RSMo)

Now I have to wonder how many other states besides the six listed on the forum have these convoluted rules, where they do not just ban write-ins all together, just if you filed for nomination for the office. Geez.

Do you know if the campaign has a list of those states where it is possible to write-in Ron Paul? And will he have filed the declaration of intent?

I cannot bring myself to vote for anyone but RP. I voted for him last election and he wasn't even running, let alone file a dec. of intent.

Yeah, I don't know anything about what may or may not have been done on a write-in campaign... While I think it's really admirable, and encourage people to do so, I don't think that it's really that feasible... it's obviously even more difficult to be elected as a write-in candidate than it is as an independent or third party candidate.

JonathanBydlak
03-15-2008, 06:38 PM
have you read gargantua and pantagruel?

jonathan,

what type of non-profit work are you thinking?


glad to (sorta) meet you, welcome to the forum!

Well, I'm interested in starting up a non-profit dealing with educational funding for students. The organization will not have any political involvement, though.

I'm not quite ready to unveil much more about it, and this probably isn't the best forum for it, but because it is very much a free-market oriented solution to a problem that is traditionally dealt with by the government, perhaps if the moderators allow, I will post on the forums about it in the coming weeks.

I believe that it's something that a lot of people on here would take an interest in, and as a shameless plug, if you have any experience in either web design or non-profit law, I'd be very interested in speaking with you. Just send me a private IM.

JonathanBydlak
03-15-2008, 06:44 PM
I am glad you trying to put this in honest perspective. Thanks for working hard into the late night.

Good campaign management is all about tradeoffs.


If one compares this to the Dean campaign in 2004, Ron Paul was usually behind every step of the way in terms of campaign development.

Meaning that Dean was getting lots of press and momentum by early spring, was doing very well by summer time, Dean was moving into first place by fall and was running a very large operation by late fall going into the primaries. Ron Paul by contrast had a very slow start but picked up by the fall.

One expert could have changed everything if the expert had control of the campaign checkbook. An expert would have hired more people in the press area to get even better press leading to more contributions. An expert would have bolstered the fundraising department because you can't do it all yourself. An expert would have hired people to coordinate the grassroots better and purchased a larger headquarters in New Hampshire and computerized the telephone lists.

An expert would know not to try and run a national campaign right away squandering the money on states that don't have primaries for months after New Hampshire. An expert would have concentrated fire Power on Iowa and New Hampshire because if you do well in those states, your fundraising and momentum go through the roof.


Back in 1996 Phil Gramm tried to run a national campaign and failed. Pat Buchanan concentrated on early states and won New Hampshire and almost won Iowa.

IN 2008 McCain was running a national campaign, then his fundraising dried up in late spring and he laid off over fifty staffers and expensive consultants. Ron Paul had more money in the bank than John McCain. Of course that caught the attention of the media. They were great stories.

But McCain, who had no choice concentrated on the early states of Iowa and New Hampshire and put everything he had into them. He came out with the momentum. Good campaign management does matter.


During the Iowa straw poll I was defending what the campaign was doing to various other political consultants and congressmen and many disagreed with the way the campaign was being run. They did not feel the campaign was aggressive enough when they needed to be. The campaign was trying to spin away low poll numbers and poor caucus showings and poor straw poll results.

Ron Paul needed to vault ahead somewhere in a major straw poll or caucus or primary to get more attention from the electorate.

Well, I think you're sort of right about the expert, but not really. I mean, don't get me wrong, we WERE hiring -- and did hire -- some wonderful press people. There were other issues in that regard, but it's not like people in the campaign needed some expert to say "you need to have a better press department."

And as far as concentrating on Iowa and NH... well, that already had been the strategy. But with regards to fundraising, I disagree. Yes, there are more people we could have hired, and there were certainly more things we could have done and I would have liked to have done, the real fundraising problem was that we didn't raise enough EARLY ON. But that wasn't because we didn't have the right "expert".. it was simply because we didn't have enough people at that point who supported Ron Paul. Fundraising, like anything else in a campaign, does not occue in a vacuum.

With respect to McCain.. keep in mind, he may have laid off staffers, but he also took out a huge loan (humorously enough -- and disgustingly IMO -- by using taxpayer matching funds as collateral, before then backing out).

JonathanBydlak
03-15-2008, 06:53 PM
This has probably been asked several times before but...

What exactly was done with ALL that money?

Along with that, alot of grassroots supporters are supremely pissed off by the way they were treated by the official campaign and some staff members.


Also, were you guys even PLANNING on even winning this thing?

Regarding how the money was spent: We dumped it in our press room, and swam around in it from time to time when we needed some exercise.

And no, I regret to say, we didn't plan on winning at all. We really didn't care. I know I didn't...
---
Come on! I'm just kidding. As I said earlier, I can't really answer how money was spent, and your best bet is to look in the FEC reports. If you have more specific questions on that, I'd be more than willing to try to answer them, or put you in touch with someone who can.

With regards to grassroots supporters being treated poorly by staffers... I don't know what particularly happened, and while I'm no longer with the campaign, I think I still can speak on their behalf to say that we're sorry for anything like that which may have happened. Do you have more details? Again, we all -- both staffers and grassroots combined -- need to remember that we're on the same team. Why fight with each other when we're up against so much more?

And as far as planning on winning this thing... of course we wanted to. That shouldn't even be up for debate, and honestly, it amazes me that people think this way. Though as I said earlier, it's true that I don't think everyone -- Ron included (or even in particular) -- thought our chances were great. But that's very different from saying people didn't develop a plan on how to win, and did not want to see a victory more than anything else in the world.

If you have anything more specific that you'd like me to answer, don't hesitate to ask.

JonathanBydlak
03-15-2008, 06:54 PM
Do you know who wrote the racist newsletters?

No, I don't really know anything about the newsletters at all. All I'm really familiar with is how the situation was discussed in the press, but I can't shed any light on who wrote them.

JonathanBydlak
03-15-2008, 06:55 PM
thank you for your time and thoughtful response.

Thank you for your thoughtful questions :)

kevman657
03-15-2008, 07:09 PM
To give my honest opinion, no, I do not think the blimp was worth it or really all that successful.

And people were against me for not wanting to do this! I have said many many times (including recently in a thread where someone suggested we bring it back) that the Blimp was a huge waste. Instead of using the campaign's employees, we had to donate tons of money to pay off salaries of new employees, only to run a freakin Blimp! Oh how much money we could have used toward better events.


Oh well. I'm just really passionate about this issue, especially since some people still think we should bring it back.

qh4dotcom
03-15-2008, 07:16 PM
Jonathan,

Will you continue to hang around these forums for a long time? We're pleased to have you around.

Zera
03-15-2008, 07:28 PM
The blimp was a disaster. The campaign was ridiculed for it by the MSM, because as Jonathan mentioned, it seemed like a novelty act. So much better things could have been done with the money...

And also, what about a Ron Paul ad during the Super Bowl? That was have been huge!

aknappjr
03-15-2008, 07:30 PM
Thank you for all your work. See you at the RNC convention.

JonathanBydlak
03-15-2008, 07:37 PM
Why didn't the campaign distance itself from known kooks like Alex Jones and Don Black?

Why wasn't more money put into better quality advertisements? The first tv ad put out was terrible.

Was the goal ever to win or was it just to spread an ideal?

Why did you try and stop the money bombs from ever happening?

Well, I've addressed two of those topics already, so you might want to read some of the previous posts to ge more of a response. But to summarize, a lot of money was put into ads, and the goal of staff certainly was to win.

I also talked about Alex Jones, but regarding Don Black... as Ron said at the time, and I believe I also said in one of those press conferences, it didn't make sense to return Don Black's donation. No campaign has an obligation to look into every individual's background and determine if it's "OK" to accept their donations. When someone donates to a campaign, it's because they are endorsing the political views of tha candidate -- not because Ron Paul was endorsing everything that Don Black believes. Now, all of that being said, in hindsight, I admit that it probably would have been wiser from a political perspective just to refund the donation so that the press wouldn't bother talking about it. But I stand by my belief that anyone who finds Mr. Black's beliefs unsavory -- myself included -- should rather have the money in the hands of Dr. Paul.

To address the money bombs point... You got me! As fundraising director of the campaign, you can bet that I hated seeing over $6 million coming into the campaign on one day. That's the last thing the campaign needed... more funding to pay for all of its many expenses. hah!

Seriously though, as I said in an earlier post, the reason for the messaging that we sent out was a very practical one. Knowing that Dr. Paul was not going to go into debt, we could not spend money that we did not have. And that fact is, at the end of November, the money that was in the bank was all earmarked for specific purposes. That meant that we could not continue to spend it on TV ads in Iowa, where were were seeing our poll numbers rally as a result. There's really nothing you can say that would convince me that raising more money earlier is better than raising it all later on. I tried hard to convey that in my message, and to be honest, while I could have done a better job, I also think that many people were so excited about the Tea Party, that they just didn't want to listen to what I was saying. I wish I had done a better job, and maybe you're right that we would have raised more on Dec 16th without the email. But while that might have gotten us more press if the amount raised had been bigger, I know for a fact that we paid a cost in Iowa by having to wait for funds. And all that said, I don't really believe that the Tea Party was hurt, because I think that the message that was sent was received well by many donors who otherwise would not have donating on December 16th. So in essence, I don't think email messages and grassroots-organized mass donation days were mutually exclusive; in the end, I think we brought in more money as a result.

That all may be incorrect, but that was, and at this point still continues to be, my rationale.

JonathanBydlak
03-15-2008, 07:40 PM
I think the blimp was a waste of resources, but at the same time, I don't think those resources would have ever been diverted to the PCC in the first place. The $300-$400k spent on the blimp I am sure Ron still has in the bank in funds not-spent, so I don't think saying it would have been diverted to the Precinct program makes much sense. I am not saying blimp resources came from $2300 people, but my hunch is a decent chunk did.

Who knows if PCC had enough money to really do anything effectively. I don't blame JB or any of the staff. Who is to say if we had veteran campaign-experienced professionals from Campaign Manager to Fundraising Director to IT-guy those millions would have made a difference. My honest opinion is "who knows". We tried.

But the thing is, we hear tons and tons of people say "well the campaign's over, go home and suck your thumb". But just tonight, we are seeing convention victories all over the place and have been doing so for the past month I'd posit.

So we may not get the trophy, but look how many people have been brought into the political process, and due to their emotional connection to Ron Paul and the Founders' principles, they're highly unlikely to stop fighting. We are placing people in serious state conventions and in party positions of influence. This campaign is far from over.

No matter what any of you think of Ron's staff, my heart tells me they are true believers and did all they could do to promote his campaign. Look...were they amateurs in this game? Yeah, they were. But so are we. But are we making progress now at getting people into the party where they will have a chance to make a difference? Heck yes we are, and we should ask the RP Staff to join us with open arms. They are believers, and I hope they'll be part of the movement here.

Thank you so much for that post. That is one of the best written and most insightful commentaries about this campaign I've seen yet.

JonathanBydlak
03-15-2008, 07:42 PM
Ditto what Cowlsey said.

The great thing about our fervent minority is that WE WILL NEVER GO TO SLEEP AGAIN.

We will all be involved in the process now and fight for and run as Ron Paul-like candidates that believe in the power of freedom, prosperity, and peace.

Obama-maniacs are not voting for PRINCIPLE, they are voting for a man for a man (history tell us that is DANGEROUS). There is no telling what kind of candidate they will support in their future. But we know what kinds of candidate we will support, and that is the growing power of this movement. As G. Edward Griffin puts it, this movement is holographic in structure with every person containing the sufficient knowledge of the principles such that even if our numbers dwindle due to oppression and the plate is shattered, light can be shown through the small piece of holographic plate and the original image will be 100% intact. Or like in genetics, every cell of this freedom organism has all of the DNA necessary to provide a blueprint to create an entire new population with the same principles.

I think that's all right, but I would just add not to take our movement for granted. I HOPE that people will continue to fight for these ideals. But I think that many will drop off. We need to do everything we can to prevent that. We need to continue doing the work necessary to win the next battle that comes along...

JonathanBydlak
03-15-2008, 07:45 PM
And people were against me for not wanting to do this! I have said many many times (including recently in a thread where someone suggested we bring it back) that the Blimp was a huge waste. Instead of using the campaign's employees, we had to donate tons of money to pay off salaries of new employees, only to run a freakin Blimp! Oh how much money we could have used toward better events.


Oh well. I'm just really passionate about this issue, especially since some people still think we should bring it back.

I can understand all that, but remember that we're in a learning position ourselves. I don't think the blimp was a big deal either way. We'll learn from what was effective about it, and then apply those lessons to the next blimp.

Like the Ron Paul [black] chopper. ;)

JonathanBydlak
03-15-2008, 07:46 PM
Jonathan,

Will you continue to hang around these forums for a long time? We're pleased to have you around.

I'll certainly do my best! I'm glad you've found what I've had to say helpful.

JonathanBydlak
03-15-2008, 07:47 PM
The blimp was a disaster. The campaign was ridiculed for it by the MSM, because as Jonathan mentioned, it seemed like a novelty act. So much better things could have been done with the money...

And also, what about a Ron Paul ad during the Super Bowl? That was have been huge!

Well, maybe, though I'm still not sold on that. And FYI, Fox did not allow the seling of SB ads anyway, so it probably would have to have been done on an affiliate-by-affiliate basis.

JonathanBydlak
03-15-2008, 07:49 PM
Thank you for all your work. See you at the RNC convention.

Thank you, too, Avery. You've put in so much hard work, and it was good times hanging with you back in October in NYC.

Everyone in here should know that Avery was a great help to the campaign, and I applaud everything he did (not that I don't applaud everyone else, too... it's just that I've worked a bit with Avery first-hand).

And if any of you need a recommendation for a radiologist, this would be the guy to speak to :)

Zera
03-15-2008, 07:54 PM
Well, maybe, though I'm still not sold on that. And FYI, Fox did not allow the seling of SB ads anyway, so it probably would have to have been done on an affiliate-by-affiliate basis.

What do you mean? I recall an Obama ad.

Suzu
03-15-2008, 07:57 PM
Hi Jonathan. Thanks so much for being here. I just have a few comments.

1.) You mentioned the monies paid to staff over and above salaries due to expenses they paid, but in the detailed expenditures breakdowns there are separate entries for salaries and expense reimbursements, and the huge amounts are described as salaries. That's where those questions came from.

2. In defense of whoever wrote that direct mail was a waste of resources, I'd just like to add that I did not receive nor do I know of anyone who received ANY mail from ANY other campaign.

3.) The cheapest form of communication is email. I signed up for updates with most of the other campaigns on both sides of the ticket, and I can tell you that I got 10x more email from each of those campaigns than I ever got from RP's. Updates almost daily in some cases. Even Mike Gravel sent out more emails than RP did. I believe it was a major mistake not using email to keep in constant contact with supporters.

4.) I was one of a few early members of this forum who railed against discussing campaign strategies in a public forum, after being urged by some of those early supporters to set up a private (i.e. not readable by the public) grassroots forum where each and every member was informally "vetted" to prevent infiltration by moles, trolls and other riff-raff. I still think it's a very bad idea to openly discuss strategies in a public forum. What's your take on this?

5.) One question: Do you know of anyone Dr. Paul might have been considering for a VP? This forum has been filled with endless speculation about a potential VP, and I think it would give a lot of us a great deal of satisfaction to know who, if anyone, might have been under consideration.

Thanks again!

JonathanBydlak
03-15-2008, 08:00 PM
What do you mean? I recall an Obama ad.

I may be wrong, but I think Obama had to run them on each individual affiliate.

OptionsTrader
03-15-2008, 08:10 PM
Jonathan,

How much money was raised in the PCC's fundraisers? I've read a few times in this thread that the grassroots wasn't ponying up the cash fast enough to meet deadlines, so why didn't the PCC go out and raise large sums of money offline like other campaigns? I'm a little annoyed by you casting blame on the grassroots money bombs not hitting their targets fast enough, but to be honest that was not your business, your business was to raise money in other ways. How well did you perform that job?

JonathanBydlak
03-15-2008, 08:33 PM
Hi Jonathan. Thanks so much for being here. I just have a few comments.

1.) You mentioned the monies paid to staff over and above salaries due to expenses they paid, but in the detailed expenditures breakdowns there are separate entries for salaries and expense reimbursements, and the huge amounts are described as salaries. That's where those questions came from.

2. In defense of whoever wrote that direct mail was a waste of resources, I'd just like to add that I did not receive nor do I know of anyone who received ANY mail from ANY other campaign.

3.) The cheapest form of communication is email. I signed up for updates with most of the other campaigns on both sides of the ticket, and I can tell you that I got 10x more email from each of those campaigns than I ever got from RP's. Updates almost daily in some cases. Even Mike Gravel sent out more emails than RP did. I believe it was a major mistake not using email to keep in constant contact with supporters.

4.) I was one of a few early members of this forum who railed against discussing campaign strategies in a public forum, after being urged by some of those early supporters to set up a private (i.e. not readable by the public) grassroots forum where each and every member was informally "vetted" to prevent infiltration by moles, trolls and other riff-raff. I still think it's a very bad idea to openly discuss strategies in a public forum. What's your take on this?

5.) One question: Do you know of anyone Dr. Paul might have been considering for a VP? This forum has been filled with endless speculation about a potential VP, and I think it would give a lot of us a great deal of satisfaction to know who, if anyone, might have been under consideration.

Thanks again!

1.) Really? If that's the case, that's news to me. That said, I'm pretty much 100% sure that some of the numbers being kicked around are inaccurate.

3.) I completely agree with you in this respect. For what it's worth, I fought for that for pretty much the whole time I was on the campaign. In my opinion, there was little reason not to send out more emails, so long as they were substantive and did not turn into spam. While I don't think it's necessary to email as frequently as other campaigns (just because they do it doesn't mean it's right), I definitely fall on the side of emailing more rather than less.

4.) I don't know if I really have an opinion about this. Sure, you don't want you campaign strategies totally out in the open, but then again, all it takes is one person to stop something from remaining a secret.

One point I would like to add... I think that often times many supporters felt that because they didn't know HQ's strategy, there necessarily was not one. And while I certainly did not know many aspects of our strategy, I also think that the reason many aspects were not made public was because of exactly what you described.

5.) I really don't, unfortunately (trust me, we speculated, too!). I'm sure there were some discussions of an informal nature behind the scenes, but I don't know if there were serious discussions of anyone in particular.

JonathanBydlak
03-15-2008, 08:49 PM
Jonathan,

How much money was raised in the PCC's fundraisers? I've read a few times in this thread that the grassroots wasn't ponying up the cash fast enough to meet deadlines, so why didn't the PCC go out and raise large sums of money offline like other campaigns? I'm a little annoyed by you casting blame on the grassroots money bombs not hitting their targets fast enough, but to be honest that was not your business, your business was to raise money in other ways. How well did you perform that job?

This is an excellent question, OptionsTrader, and something I had pretty much totally forgotten myself. Lemme tell you the story as best I remember it.

When I joined the campaign in August, organizing traditional fundraisers was just starting to become a significant part of our fundraising stratgy. We had the very successful west coast trip towards the end of August (if my memory serves me correct), where Ron was in Pasadena, San Fran, Seattle, and Salt Lake City. We also did significant funders in Florida, Philly, Michigan, Chicago, NYC among many other places. I spent a good chunk of my time in the 3rd quarter helping to plan and organize these fundraisers. I don't know how much in total was brought in by all of them, but my guess is that they'd represent about 1/5 of our 3rd quarter total.

We continued doing fundraisers in October as well, but we started running into an issue: Ron's time. As I mentioned earlier, because of congressional and other obligations, the amount of Ron's time that we had available was becoming more limited. If Ron was running around to "places where the money was" like California, Florida, etc., how would he do the necessary campaigning in Iowa, New Hampshire, and the early primary states? The problem is that the places where it was easier to raise funds were not necessarily the same as the places where Ron needed to spend his time campaigning and doing media events.

Plus, trips like that to California take a lot of energy. Those trips are exhausting for anyone, let alone a 72-year old man, and spending all his time raising money at these events not only meant Ron had less time for media and campaigning, but also that it made it difficult to "be at the top of his game" for all these events. So as Ron's time got limited, we realized we had to focus all of our efforts on raising money by other means. And of course, let's not forget how time intensive the planning of these events was not just on me, but also on our field staff and MANY volunteers. Not that anyone really minded, but it's not good when our field staff have to organize fundraisers, rather than organizing grassroots supporters to find new supporters and work towards getting out the vote on Election Day.

As we started seeing the success that we had raising money online using fundraisig widgets, emails, etc, Kent and I made the conscious decision to focus our efforts on utilizing our online base as much as possible, and we crafted our subsequent fundraising strategy around that. As a result, we phased out most fundraisers by the end of November. So it wasn't that we didn't have an interest in doing more fundraisers, it was just that the time wasn't there to do them.

Do you think that this was the right thing to do? I believe pretty strongly that it was, and know that it was very necessary at the time.

One other comment... the fact is that "raising money on time" actually was my business... my main job was to raise as much funding for the campaign, as soon as possible -- not only to raise it by some means and not worry about others. I think it would have been a mistake for me to just say "the grassroots have got this one; I shouldn't think/worry about it." Obviously the help was huge, but a good part of my job still involved communicating with all of our supporters, trying to manage group psychology, and motivating them to donate as much as possible, and as soon as possible, to the campaign.

Whatdya think?

Knightskye
03-15-2008, 09:07 PM
Was this your first time being involved in a political campaign?

JonathanBydlak
03-15-2008, 09:12 PM
Was this your first time being involved in a political campaign?

Yes. I had done a little volunteer work here and there when I was in high school and in college (even saw John McCain pocket a $20 bill from a guy standing in front of me at a fundraiser -- how's that for an interesting first real experience with politics?). -- To clarify that point, no, I am not a supporter of John McCain. Back in 2000 I had a friend whose mom did some organizing in local Republican politics. Just figured I'd clarify that before anyone thinks I'm a mole. I'll leave that to Don Luskin :D

I've always been very interested in politics (it's a running joke in my family, because I've had a picture of Ronald Reagan on my bedroom dresser given to me by my grandparents -- two lifelong Democrats -- since 1st grade), but prior to joining the campaign, I had worked for two years in finance. Heh, and for what it's worth... my first ever book purchase was Reagan's collection of speeches, Speaking My Mind back around when I was 7, too.

The Lantern
03-15-2008, 09:26 PM
Jonathan.

Can you enlighten us on the internal debate over accepting matching funds. I personally check the little box on my income tax return to fund this program. I would have liked to have seen the campaign take the money. As near as I can figure out from the widgets and the transparency of your fundraising Dr. Paul probably qualified for $14-$16 Million. Is this figure accurate?

I can understand why Dr. Paul might not want to accept the money, but what I cannot understand is why did the campaign not hold a press conference? It would seem to me that you could have announced a press conference several days in advance with the subject being Dr. Paul's matching $14 Million. The press would have salivated for a few days about the prospect of the campaign having access to millions. Then when the whole world was watching, Dr. Paul could explain why he was not going to accept stolen money from the treasury. I think the impact of this would have been astronomical. Especially before some of the early primaries.

Anyway, thank you for the wonderful job you did for the movement. I will be looking forward to reading about you in the future.

haigh
03-15-2008, 09:59 PM
Hi Jonathan,

Thanks for taking all the questions.
Jason Sorens, founder of the Free State Project did a very interesting analysis of the NH outcome. Would you comment, particularly on his comments about income, ignorance, and turnout ?

http://www.freestateproject.org/community/essays/2008_nh_primary_impact

NH was a huge disappointment and I suspect more discussion of this expectation failure would be constructive.

JonathanBydlak
03-15-2008, 10:01 PM
Jonathan.

Can you enlighten us on the internal debate over accepting matching funds. I personally check the little box on my income tax return to fund this program. I would have liked to have seen the campaign take the money. As near as I can figure out from the widgets and the transparency of your fundraising Dr. Paul probably qualified for $14-$16 Million. Is this figure accurate?

I can understand why Dr. Paul might not want to accept the money, but what I cannot understand is why did the campaign not hold a press conference? It would seem to me that you could have announced a press conference several days in advance with the subject being Dr. Paul's matching $14 Million. The press would have salivated for a few days about the prospect of the campaign having access to millions. Then when the whole world was watching, Dr. Paul could explain why he was not going to accept stolen money from the treasury. I think the impact of this would have been astronomical. Especially before some of the early primaries.

Anyway, thank you for the wonderful job you did for the movement. I will be looking forward to reading about you in the future.

Well, I can't really tell you much on the "internal debate" because I was only tangentially involved in those discussions. So really all I know is what Dr. Paul has said publicly, which is that he does not believe in taking the taxpayers' money. Though I would imagine that another factor to consider is that while it would have increased the money that the campaign would have had in our coffers, it also would have placed severe restrictions on how much money we could have spent in the individual states. Remember that if we were to buy TV ads on a Boston station that reaches into New Hampshire, part of that expense would count towards our New Hampshire spending as well as Massachusetts. So it's not clear that it would have been politically advantageous, even though the expected total was around the range of your estimate. It was my advice, because of that reasoning, not to accept the funding.

I do agree entirely with your press conference idea, and I know that myself and a couple of other people in the campaign suggested this idea. But again, because I wasn't in those discussions, I can't tell you why a pres conference of that nature never occured. But I certainly wish it had.

I noticed you didn't state where you're looking forward to reading about me... did you mean the local police log? :)

The Lantern
03-15-2008, 10:15 PM
I noticed you didn't state where you're looking forward to reading about me... did you mean the local police log? :)

I simply meant that I would be reading about you in the future. You will probably be involved in other campaigns or maybe even running for Congress yourself. After all, you are a graduate of the University of Ron Paul, Class of 2008.

JonathanBydlak
03-15-2008, 10:30 PM
Hi Jonathan,

Thanks for taking all the questions.
Jason Sorens, founder of the Free State Project did a very interesting analysis of the NH outcome. Would you comment, particularly on his comments about income, ignorance, and turnout ?

http://www.freestateproject.org/community/essays/2008_nh_primary_impact

NH was a huge disappointment and I suspect more discussion of this expectation failure would be constructive.

Yeah, this is an interesting article, though I must admit that my background in statistics/economics makes me hesitant to apply statistical models in this case. Not that the mathematical analysis itself is incorrect, but some of the conclusions are inaccurate. As an example, it really is not fair to say "What that means that we definitely know that Free Staters influenced the election beyond their own votes." We don't definitely know that, and in fact, the footnote says that statistical significant was lost when the pioneers variable was added in. When Mr. Sorens gives the examples in Grafton and Richmond, I'd like to know whether there are counter-examples in other cities. I find it hard to believe those conclusions really can be reached either. Anyway, all that said, I'll reserve judgement on the statistical analysis because I haven't seen the underlying coefficients and data.

But to comment on some of the conclusions, it seems to make sense to me that Dr. Paul appealed more to individuals who were having economic difficulty for the reasons that Mr. Sorens gave. Generally speaking, you'd expect people who are better off to be more hesitant to see fundamental changes to the system that they presumably see as having been fair to them personally. I personally also feel as though Ron oftentimes didn't stress his support of free trade enough to appeal to Republicans.

My gut tells me that the biggest factors are those which Sorens offers no statistical analysis for: tactical voting and voter turnout. I think that one of the biggest issues that our campaign had to deal with was this perception of Ron's unelectability. How many times did we hear the line "I like Ron Paul, but he can't win"? I don't really know how you get around that problem, really other than having Ron make drastic changes in the way he presents ideas (which would not have been good in many other respects)... do you have any thoughts on this question?

JonathanBydlak
03-15-2008, 10:31 PM
I simply meant that I would be reading about you in the future. You will probably be involved in other campaigns or maybe even running for Congress yourself. After all, you are a graduate of the University of Ron Paul, Class of 2008.

Haha, thanks. I was just kidding around...

nelsonwinters
03-16-2008, 12:51 AM
Thanks for your candor in answering all the questions. Just curious:

1. Any idea if Rand has any interest in entering politics?

2. What's your perspective on McCain's problems with the FEC?

Bro.Butch
03-16-2008, 01:50 AM
I've read 110 of these posts and I'm tired of reading so if you've already answered my questions I apologize.

1. Who was in charge of campaign strategy in 2007 and pre tsunami tues and now (all person's names please) ?


You say work within a Party controlled by neo-cons who attempted to block Ron at every turn. A party which Ron barely received 5% of the vote in most states (and a large percentage of the 5% were Independents, Democrats, Libertarian, Constitutionalist, NOTA and yes even anarchists ). A Party who tortures human beings, who is now planning to spread war anywhere and everywhere they so choose. A Party run by people who don't care about our liberty, our borders, or quite frankly any of us or our children or our grandchildren's future.

2. Roughly, how many years do you think it will take to change this Party you support ?

3. Do you honestly think we have enough time to change this Party (with the possibility of the collapse of the EMPIRE or us dying of old age) ?


4. Why was campaign materials not sent out to states until about a week before election day not giving enough time to fully utilize them ?!?


5. Did you ever feel the campaign was about three months behind ? THX for your answers

As good and honest a man as Dr. Paul is I think it is quite a sad state when in a year with so many possible dangers in front of us, economic and politicly, he leaves us with the choice of McCain -vs-Clinton/Obama. In a year that BEGS for a credible fiscal conservative-sane foreign policy alternative campaign against these most unsatisfactory candidates, he declines to compete.

Sadly Dr. Paul's campaign has sucked almost all the funds out of the Libertarian and Constitutional Parties base. Effectively he has destroyed any hope for any opposition to the socialists put forth by the corporant Party, other than himself and you say he won't continue to run as an alternative just two more months after the Republican convention (Sept.4-Nov.4) against them.

In 1987 Ron was coming off the worse defeat in his political career, a forgetable humbling U.S. Senate race loss to Gramm. He was at a low point in his political life, yet he sought the Libertarian POTUS nomination. He was given the nomination by the Libertarians giving him a national platform in which to make his political comeback. He was able to make many new contacts and gained much future financial support nationally through that Presidential campaign. Support he relied on to help him make it back to the House in the 90s. Support which helped him to re-election bi-annually. With his annoucement of intentions in '07, the Libertarians again came forth with their wholehearted support, both financially and physically. Ron Paul is an over twenty year (lifetime) member of the Libertarian Party in good standing. In Decemder of '07 the Libertarian Executive Committee unamously passed an order requesting Dr. Paul to seek the Libertarian POTUS nomination (IF in Feb. he was rejected by the Republican voters). Well, friends he was REJECTED. The Libertarian Party is now at a low tide in their political life due to slow fundraising. Their campaign contributions in effect are already "ALL IN". All in behind Ron Paul and this campaign.

The gentleman Ron Paul needs to accept that Libertarian nomination and ANY nomination from any pro-Constitution Party and continue this campaign until Nov. 4. He needs to return that favor that was extended to him over twenty years ago. He can remain in the Republican primary race, retain his house seat (he has no Dem opposition), and run as U.S. Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX). All efforts to "change" the Republican Party can continue by you who choose to continue. However the rest of us would like to contest this election until Nov. 4 with Ron Paul on the ballot!

He has stated McCain is opposed to what he has stood for for 30 years. He will not endorse him under any circumstances. Why not carry on until Nov. 4? I submit to all of you Ron will attract more votes from Dem leaning people than he will from McCain leaning voters. Ron is ANTI-Empire ! Didn't the FOX news people tell all of you Ron was in the wrong Party's race ? If his effort will hurt the Dems WHY would any true Republican be against him harming the Democratic Party?
PEACE

libertarian4321
03-16-2008, 03:27 AM
.

[B][SIZE="4"]
Sadly Dr. Paul's campaign has sucked almost all the funds out of the Libertarian and Constitutional Parties base. Effectively he has destroyed any hope for any opposition to the socialists put forth by the corporant Party, other than himself and you say he won't continue to run as an alternative just two more months after the Republican convention (Sept.4-Nov.4) against them.

In 1987 Ron was coming off the worse defeat in his political career, a forgetable humbling U.S. Senate race loss to Gramm. He was at a low point in his political life, yet he sought the Libertarian POTUS nomination. He was given the nomination by the Libertarians giving him a national platform in which to make his political comeback. He was able to make many new contacts and gained much future financial support nationally through that Presidential campaign. Support he relied on to help him make it back to the House in the 90s.


I'm a Libertarian who came back to the GOP to help Dr. Paul, and I think you VASTLY overstate the importance of the Libertarian Party Presidential nomination. I pay attention to politics, and frankly, I had NO IDEA Ron Paul was running for President in 1988 (nor, I suspect, did 99% of the populace). Its not like he got any coverage of note.

Lets face it, Ron got more coverage for the libertarian movement running in the Republican primary than all the Libertarians running for President, combined, have received in 36 years. Hell, lets be honest, he got more coverage running the in the GOP primary than all the Libertarians, running for any office, combined, have received in 36 years.

So I'm not sure Ron owes the LP anything- he introduced more Americans to libertarian principles than all the Libertarian candidates who have ever run for any office have done. While he may have drained money from the LP in the short run, in the long run his GOP campaign may prove a boon to the LP- some of these new libertarians will stay in the RP, but others will drift to the LP.

Frankly, if Ron ran as a Libertarian, he'd be utterly ignored (as all Libertarian candidates are). What good would it be to run as a Libertarian for a couple of months, get ignored, then pull maybe 2% in the general election? If he ran as a Libertarian, he'd accomplish nothing, and he'd destroy any chance he might have of influencing the RP.

Flirple
03-16-2008, 04:24 AM
This thread is great. Thanks again. Here's 2 more:
1) Was this immigration campaign mailer from HQ or is it a fake?: http://media.canada.com/8137d59a-9e08-4da3-bbed-0619af48403b/mailer.JPG

2) Can you give us a sense of what the interactions were like between you guys and the staffs of the other candidates behind the scenes at the debates? I'm thinking more here about rank and file staffers not so much the campaign managers or candidates themselves. I mean, was there open hostility? Were you guys sneered at when passing in the halls or rubbing elbows in the spin room? Or did you ever sense any envy from the staffs of other campaigns or that they maybe secretly respected Ron Paul and our movement? Did you ever get any sense that they had any clue whatsoever what we, you, and Ron are all about or more specifically that what Ron was saying on stage in the debates was true even if they (and their candidate) couldn't admit it? I guess I assume that all the rival campaign staffs sort of hate each other but I'm just curious if you guys were treated differently?

Thanks again for serving with the campaign as well as doing this thread.