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bobbyw24
11-18-2009, 06:35 AM
http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2009/11/17/washington-wire-qa-with-trevor-lyman/

Washington Wire Q&A With Trevor Lyman

By Susan Davis

Trevor Lyman made a name for himself during the 2008 presidential campaign when he used his Internet skills to independently coordinate grassroots donations for Ron Paul on specific days that came to be known as “money bombs.” The pinnacle of his achievement was a Dec. 16, 2007 money bomb for Paul that generated a record-breaking $6 million in Internet donations in a single day.

Not bad for a former musician and Internet entrepreneur who had never before been involved in politics.

Paul lost the primary, but Lyman has maintained his interest in Internet fund-raising, launching ThisNovember5th.com, a site that has, among other initiatives, helped raise about $500,000 for Paul’s son Rand Paul, who is running in the 2010 GOP primary for an open Senate seat in Kentucky. A separate multi-candidate money bomb raised more than $133,000 earlier this month.

Lyman launched his latest site, TeaBombs.com, last week. Its mission statement reads: “Our mission is to focus grassroots conservative ‘tea-party’ energy into an effort that will remove non-conservative establishment incumbents from Congress in 2010. Together we will select which incumbents to target for removal and which of their challengers to fund.”

Washington Wire caught up with Lyman today to check in on the site, the Tea Party movement, his political views, and whether or not a GOP comeback is on the horizon.

Washington Wire: Explain what TeaBombs.com is and how it works.
Lyman: The goal is to fund challengers to incumbents that are anti to our ideals and principles. We took issues like the bailouts, the stimulus package, health care, and things like that. Things that we think where more government is bad and so on. Those are the issues that we judged the candidates on. And basically what we’ve done is listed all of the incumbents who are not conservative and we put them up.
Anyone who was conservative down the line was not put up for a vote. And you can go in there and vote for who you want, and who you would most like to see gone. And the next phase is we would have challengers list themselves to that incumbent and then we have an internet primary where the challengers face off against each other and the community will vote for who they think is the best challenger to that candidate. And then once that voting has occurred we will throw a money bomb for all of those candidates on Dec. 16. And then we’re going to basically repeat that process once a quarter. It’s an effort we plan on doing for years and years to come, all depending on how the landscape is…

Washington Wire: Obviously, the name appears to tie itself to the Tea Party movement, do you identify with that part of the party and the things it has come to symbolize?
Lyman: It’s kind of interesting because there’s mainstream Republican, there’s Tea Party Republican, and there’s Ron Paul Republican, and the Tea Party are those that are angry more on principle. Now they may have some different viewpoints from us, but it’s still a movement that came from the people.

Washington Wire: But this TeaBombs site is not affiliated with that movement?
Lyman: No, not at this point. We would like to, we are trying to market to their audience, so we would accept it and welcome it and any kind of cross promotion we would do. But structurally, organizationally, there is no connection.

Washington Wire: Talk to me about how you transitioned from the money bombs you coordinated during the presidential campaign to what you’re doing now?
Lyman: I just kept plugging away. We just kept trying news things and here is a new concept I think is going to work. It appeals to the mainstream Republican, and it sort of offers the opportunity for the two divisions of the Republican Party to unite and stand for the things they agree on. We know that we need to, whenever we can, attach ourselves to the larger party and work for our ideals so long as they’re in synch with their’s. For us, the Republicans are the lesser of two evils because. We should be able to say the Democratic perspective would mean anti-war and the protection of civil liberties but that hasn’t happened. There’s nothing to go to the Democrats for at all. As people, yes, for leadership, no.

Washington Wire: You are involved with ThisNovember5th.com, is this related to TeaBombs.com or is it a separate effort?
Lyman: Certainly they’re distinct efforts in that they do somewhat different things in terms of who they’re representing. I own ThisNovember5th, I may continue on and try and offer tools for the candidates who are strictly Ron Paul Republicans on that site, but we’ll see.

Washington Wire: For the Dec. 16 money bomb, do you have a set number of candidates you’re going to support?
Lyman: We still have to figure that out, but that limit probably won’t be a hard limit. We’ll probably list everyone but those that are the more active races will be listed first.

Washington Wire: I was checking out the site and noticed that one of the people in the Top 10 is Charlie Rangel, and obviously he’s the kind of candidate conservatives would love to see out of office but at the same time it’s pretty reasonable to say there’s no way a conservative candidate could win in his district, which voted almost 95% for Barack Obama. So is there a way to narrow that list to determine political viability, or is this just a straight grassroots effort—so if they say Charlie Rangel is the No. 1 target you’re going to support a Republican candidate in that district?
Lyman: We wouldn’t be able to make our own determination. Even if we’re running a Republican in a district that he or she has a small chance to win, politics is also about education. So if you have a representative there who is talking about your ideas, that’s the only way to start a conversation and change going. If you don’t try you’re never going to win, so I would look at those as longer-term projects.

Washington Wire: Is this your full-time gig now or something you’re doing on the side?
Lyman: When everything happened with the whole money bomb thing, I had an online business and started basically selling off my shares to fund myself that way. I’m sort of still in that mode to some degree, but I’m making this my full-time job.

Washington Wire: When you started fund-raising last year you had never had much interest in politics prior to the Ron Paul campaign and now you’re heavily involved in the political process. This is sort of a philosophical question, but how has your political views changed or evolved over the past year as you immersed yourself in the process?
Lyman: I got in to this mostly because of the war and certainly have had a lot of perspectives change because of what I’ve learned from Ron Paul, who I think represents the true conservative perspective that I really didn’t know much about before. Certainly I’ve had a lot of growth and change in my perspective but I think no matter where you sit in the political spectrum right now, the government is completely non-responsive to you. And I think that’s the larger issue. And that’s why I like this project because I think it’s more about getting involved and showing representatives that they have to represent you. Democrats have a lot to be upset about with their leadership because the war continues to rage, spying still goes, I don’t really know what’s improved. I guess the only thing they can say is it’s always a concession, “They’re still doing a war but at least we’re getting health care.” This is nonsense.

Washington Wire: If you were to talk about the ideal candidate that these Tea Bombs would support, what would they look like, what would their agenda be?
Lyman: If you go to the site and click the ‘Rules’ button that outlines it. But right now the way we have it defined is [opposition to] cap and trade, health care, the bailout, the stimulus package, amnesty and anti-crime legislation.

Washington Wire: What kind of support have you seen for the site so far?
Lyman: It’s been pretty good. Right now we’re about to break the 1,000 member mark and we’ve really just gotten going a few days ago. And there’s been about 12,000 votes so far. And when I look at the traffic most of it is coming from direct traffic which kind of indicates word of mouth is having an effect here.

Washington Wire: Do you consider yourself a Republican?
Lyman: From the Ron Paul perspective, yes. If you’re going to say [Sean] Hannity, no, I would be outraged.

Washington Wire: Do you have any association with Ron Paul operation?
Lyman: We never have in any official way. But sure, I always want to help with the things that we do.

Washington Wire: Obviously Democrats hold pretty solid majorities in the House and Senate, do you think Republicans have a shot at taking back the majority or making significant gains in 2010?
Lyman: I don’t know. I guess it depends on how Democrats are reacting to the fact that things haven’t changed and they could have by now. I think it’s the independent voter that holds the key, and so I think it’s possible. I do, it just depends on how they’re feeling and whether they got the change they wanted or not.