Report on Debate day/Straw Poll Events in St. Petes!!

[Cindy]

It was easy to start getting amped and excited on the way in, as every interstate, highway and road heading in was Plastered with Ron Paul signs and banners from 30 minutes out.

No signs for anyone else.

Pioneer Park (beautiful place next to Mahaffey Theatre) was packed and lined with RP signs and RP suppporters, wearing his shirts and carrying all sorts of signs. ( Lots of cool custom printed and light up ones!!!) RP decked out cars were verywhere.

They has 3 different buss/trolleys circling the 3 venues dropping people off and picking them up around. It was so nice and convenient and fun!

Some other group was running their own Straw Poll at Pioneer Park. I asked a guy at the table a question and he said, " I don't know. I do know that you Ron paul people are Highly organized though!

(We blew everyone into Shock and AWE HARD!)

At Vinoy Park, where the GOP Straw Poll and BBQ was, the crowed was 95% Ron Paul supporters.

For 3 hours, from any venue, you could look up and see the Ron Paul air plane banner flying, you could look out at the water from either park and see Huge Ron Paul boats, and as dusk settled in, there were two planes flying the lighted Ron Paul signs over head.

The only other candidate signs at the straw Paul were for Rudy and Mitt. No signs for Huckabee, McCain, Thompson, Tancredo, or Hunter, nor even a supporter wearing a T-shirt or button of theirs was present.

There were around 1,000 RP supporters circling in and out, and maybe 20 Mitt and 20 Rudy supporters at the Straw Poll total.

We must've creamed it on the straw poll, although, one Mitt Supporter had 300-600 tickets and they let people vote as many times as they had tickets for. When you get the results Romney's and Rudys numbers will have come from just 20 people voting hundreds of times over. ( talk about spamming the polls)

Ron Paul was the IT man of the Day. Total domination of a 1 mile radius, on Land, in the Air and by Sea.

Paul had his own, Navy Airforce and Army there!lol

We dominated so hard, that when Mitts sons went up to make a speach for him, the RP supporters drwoned the first one out screaming for Ron Paul, and Mitts kids just gave up and left. They had no supporters there and they knew it.

None of the candidates were there either. Lots of RP supporters were giving speeches for RP though.

Outside of Mahaffey Theatre, during the pre debate sign waving, the only other Republican supporters there was a small group of maybe 20 tops for Rudy. No one else had supporters anywhere outside of the Theatre.

We had a group of hundreds scattered about into small groups. They said we could be heard from Blocks away chanting for Ron Paul.

During RPs post debate speech at the Palladium Theatre, he told us that Rudy went to make some small talk with him after the debate, and said, " You have a lot of Supporters" Paul said back, " And this is only the beggining" ;)

They had the Palladium theatre decked out beautifully for Paul. It was a gorgeous building (perfect spot for the next President of the U.S. of A to give a speech at) . They had these GIANT verticle banners hanging down between the front collums, with spot lights on them. Just gorgeous it was!

For those of us who didn't have tickets into the debate, it was so much fun watching it in that Theatre together. We were at maximum capacity in there 800, and we could and did BOO loudly at the other candidates with people shouting LIAR at them when they were lying, (lol) and cheered wildly every time they just showed a picture of Paul.

After we went outside for more sign wavings here and there to catch the crowds leaving the debate, until Paul showed up to give his speech. It was 11:30 on a week day night and the place was packed and AMPED for Paul!!!

Sadly, he didn't stay to shake hands or sign his autograph but oh well. It was the first time I saw him in person and it was wierd. I felt like I was inside of a youtube video. lol



I hope someone gets a lot of pictures and videos of the day posted for you all. Tons were taken.

We were there, in full force, strong loud and proud, tight and highly organized.

Never saw anything like before!

[r3volution]

makes me miss st pete :'( (lived there in 2001) . cant wait for the vids and pics tomorrow ! ..

[austin356]

what r da results

[spacebetween]

It was the first time I saw him in person and it was wierd. I felt like I was inside of a youtube video. lol

LOL!! QFT

You pretty much felt the way you should feel anytime you're at a Ron Paul event. :P

[Edward]

I felt like I was inside of a youtube video.Don't be surprised if you are. Great post, btw.

[ctb619]

Wonderful recap....I watched the speech and the enthusiasm of the crowd was second to none

[sgrooms]

has anyone noticed that cnn seems to be trying to make up for their bias to the other candidates during the debate? every time they come out of a commercial break or go into one, they show clips of Ron Paul, and on the homepage of cnn they have a picture of RP at the debate

[Delain]

I watched the internetstream. It was absolutely awe inspiring. Wish I could've been there.

Can understand that it must be a little weird or surreal. lol

But is sounds you've had a great time :)

[austin356]

has anyone noticed that cnn seems to be trying to make up for their bias to the other candidates during the debate? every time they come out of a commercial break or go into one, they show clips of Ron Paul, and on the homepage of cnn they have a picture of RP at the debate



absolutely. Like we are stupid enough to fall for such tricks.

They know Ron Paul supporters are vastly overweight on the net. By transferring attention of Ron Paul to the stream they were able to reduce their bias while not reducing its effects.

We are not soo stupid!!

[Malakai0]

Guys I am so upset. I was there much of the day too, talked to the clearwater meetup organizer (Paul I think?) a little bit while we were eating our bbq pork sandwiches!

It was all Ron Paul. This result is a disgrace. How did the people handling the votes (they seemed very nice wtf) not notice the same 20 people voting 20 times each????



Anyway away from the negatives, I had a wonderfully fantastic time. The organizers deserve so much respect, we literally owned St Pete today. Watching the debate with everyone in the Palladium was so awesome. Such fun comments yelled at the screen hehe ^^

[Cindy]

Guys I am so upset. I was there much of the day too, talked to the clearwater meetup organizer (Paul I think?) a little bit while we were eating our bbq pork sandwiches!

It was all Ron Paul. This result is a disgrace. How did the people handling the votes (they seemed very nice wtf) not notice the same 20 people voting 20 times each????

They knew about it. They said it was okay when RP supporters started pointing it out.

As long as you had a $20 ticket, you could vote as many times as you wanted too, according to the GOP organizers of the Poll. What a bunch of phoney baloney is that? That straw poll was no measure of a campaigns support or orgranization. We were light years ahead of the rest on both support and organization.

That GOP poll, was just a ploy to get people to buy as many tickets from them as they could sell to anyone willing to pay for hundreds of them.

I thought Mitt was going to come in a far second place .:confused:

This is just total BS. The GOP that hosted the event should be EMBARASSED showing Mitt as the winner when it was clear to anyone within a mile radius that Ron Paul supporters just DOMINATED the area HARD with supporters and a highly organized showing by land, sea and air!!!

This reminded me of the recent reports about college students selling their votes for the primaries to the highest bidder. I wonder how many of them Mitts campaign has bought off to vote for him already.:(

We know the truth and don't forget it!!!Hopefully, you tubers have the truth captured on film as well.

I don't think I would be able to stomach reading the article on the straw poll results. Hearing the numbers is buzz kill enough. :(

[Malakai0]

Don't read it if you haven't already. As usual the SPTimes smears us, like our trolley circling 3 blocks so we could get around the events equates to us "bussing in supporters".


Honestly, how can we expect a fair shake in the republican primary when the same people who will be organizing that organized this blatant charade.
Is my friend Jason (who was there with me) right when he says they will rig the poll and a revolt will be the only way to get any real change for our country? I mean, is the corruption really that bad that violence is going to turn out to be the only way out of this disgusting mess?

[Cindy]

I'll be sending a letter to the editor of the St. Petes Times tomorrow, mostly to make a correction about what those mini busses and the trolley was being used for.

That issue aside,

I remembered something SWEET, I wanted to share.:)

After Ron Pauls speech at the Palladium, Paul, the organizer of the Clearwater meetup group, said to Ron Paul, " After your speeches, it's you who is signing your name to other peoples T-shirts. This time, we wanted to give you one that we signed. ( All the Clearwater meetup people signed an RP T- Shirt.

Paul had a huge humble smile, and immediately went to pull it on over his shirt and tie and then raised his fists in the air with a huge proud smile.

It was BEAUTIFUL!!

The crowed went nutso!!!!

I can't wait to see a youtube video of it.

It ran so late, I wouldn't expect any to get posted until sometime tomorrow at the earliest.

[Malakai0]

He didn't just have his fists up, he gave us the famed double peace signs =)



You may like to know, since I don't think any of you from the meetup were with us, something fun happened right before the debate started.

A bunch of us were walking around the building the debate was held in with a megaphone and lots of RP signs marching and chanting. Well it started POURING and we started walking back chanting RON PAUL. Well, we are passing by this hotel maybe a block or 2 from the front entrance, and Giuliani comes out of the hotel with maybe 10 supporters right in front of us, getting ready to get into his limo.

Well we are standing about 8 feet from them, they are under the nice canopy and we are in the rain (or did it just stop, I forget). Anyway, his 10 start chanting RUDY RUDY and we started chanting right back, except we had like 30 people with us. He was looking at us while we were drowning out his cheers with RON PAUL RON PAUL and some friendly BOO's. Once we got synced up you couldn't even hear his people, and we weren't using the megaphone at the time either ^^

Remember Ron said that after the debate Rudy shot him some small talk and said his supporters were everywhere? I hope us standing in the cold rain boo'ing him and yelling Ron's name to him contributed. He looked pretty peeved. This really cool chick was shouting some good stuff at him too, I forget exactly what but she was awesome. I wish I knew her name she played a big part in keeping our energy up despite the rain and the long walks.


Before that, a bunch of kids calling themselves Rudy's Youth (or something along those lines) were out chanting RUDY RUDY with signs, and we picked up with RUDYS YOUTH ARE FASCIST YOUTH. The rain and the tension made it so much fun ^^
Needless to say we also outnumbered them by a decent amount. When it started raining all the Rudy people disappeared, I believe they were taken into the debate hall... We hid under overhangs and eaves of the buildings (some of the others just stood right out in the rain!) and kept up our chanting. Some guy walking buy asked us about Ron Paul, and why we supported him. The guys next to me (nice dudes, gave me a sign, but need to work on their social graces) were like yelling at him saying we can't pick his candidate or something, but I cut in and spent maybe 10-15 minutes explaining Rons monetary and foreign policy platforms.

Ah so much fun =) This was the first political event(s) I have ever been too in my life. Like our man says, HAVE FUN DOING IT!

[steph3n]

Before that, a bunch of kids calling themselves Rudy's Youth (or something along those lines) were out chanting RUDY RUDY with signs, and we picked up with RUDYS YOUTH ARE FASCIST YOUTH. The rain and the tension made it so much fun


I hate to complain, but consider what you are saying better, we are trying to win people over to vote, not call names the best. :)

[Malakai0]

I hate to complain, but consider what you are saying better, we are trying to win people over to vote, not call names the best. :)

First, your right on pure principle, I acknowledge that.

But, no offense, but Rudy definitely disseminates fascist ideology at his speeches and rallys and trash talks Ron wanting to "surrender to the islamofascists", not that he is the only one. Never be afraid of the truth.

He advocates an iron hand with both domestic policies and foreign policy.


Check out some of what he's said about domestic policies and promoting the Real ID (he even slipped it in tonight, calling it a "tamper proof ID card") on youtube.



If we shy away from truths that have bad stigma (like the NAU, NWO, nafta superhighway type stuff) I believe it will hurt us. Isn't Ron's appeal that he speaks "truth to power"?


Either way it was mostly just a bunch of sub-30 year old people there. Us kids are bound to get a lil rowdy ya know ^^
Our freedom and futures are at stake here, see how the florida republican party allowed Romney to fix the vote @the straw poll if you have any doubts left about that one =)

[MsDoodahs]

Is it just me, or does anyone else think the fact Ron has such strong support scares the shit out of both the GOP and the media?
:D

[Malakai0]

Oh I'm sure it does. If today would have been the real primary, we would have won in a landslide.


After today I have true sincere hope that our man will actually win the primary. Short of fixing the vote (...) I'm not sure theres anything they can do to stop it. Not a lot of people vote in primaries, and we have A LOT of people with more than enough dedication to vote for Ron in the primaries. I asked dozens of people if they were registered R, most said "yeah months ago".


The cops, the few Romney people, and the florida RNC people all looked pretty dazed by our turnout yesterday mwahahaha

[jcbraithwaite7]

Check out this crap. The results and comments are such a joke. I was there and let me tell you there was no way Ron Paul got beat by Romney. I watched a lady vote dozens of cards. My mom swears that she turned in one voting stub and got a stack off cards.

http://blogs.tampabay.com/buzz/2007/11/romney-wins-str.html?cid=91545736#comment-91545736

The ST Pete Times snubs Ron Paul any chance they get here is another article where they never mentioned him in an article Handicapping the GOP Race

http://www.sptimes.com/2007/11/25/State/Go_ahead__try_to_pick.shtml

[Eric21ND]

someone should've camped out at the Rudy/Mitt voting box and recorded video of the same people voting over and over again.

[wgadget]

The media and GOP SHOULD be scared. Ron Paul holds the powerful ammunition to RUIN their chances in the election, either by running independent or by WINNING.

LOL.

[NCMarc]

We need to start pretending to be Mitt supporters and see what they give us during straw polls. I bet they give you multiple ballots. We also need to infiltrate the polling places and monitor what is going on. This is insane. Literally.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bRGMrPP4as

http://s44.photobucket.com/albums/f10/PhotoJedi/?action=view&current=MVI_3905.flv

We can not let this story die.

[LinuxUser269]

They had the Palladium theater decked out beautifully for Paul. It was a gorgeous building (perfect spot for the next President of the U.S. of A to give a speech at) . They had these GIANT verticle banners hanging down between the front columns, with spot lights on them. Just gorgeous it was!

Thanks Cindy Here are the Banners you spoke of


http://photos1.meetupstatic.com/photos/event/a/4/3/1/highres_2682033.jpeg

[LinuxUser269]

They had the Palladium theater decked out beautifully for Paul. It was a gorgeous building (perfect spot for the next President of the U.S. of A to give a speech at) . They had these GIANT verticle banners hanging down between the front columns, with spot lights on them. Just gorgeous it was!

Thanks Cindy

Here are the Banners you spoke of :


http://photos1.meetupstatic.com/photos/event/a/4/3/1/highres_2682033.jpeg

[Maria]

It was easy to start getting amped and excited on the way in, as every interstate, highway and road heading in was Plastered with Ron Paul signs and banners from 30 minutes out.

No signs for anyone else.

Pioneer Park (beautiful place next to Mahaffey Theatre) was packed and lined with RP signs and RP suppporters, wearing his shirts and carrying all sorts of signs. ( Lots of cool custom printed and light up ones!!!) RP decked out cars were verywhere.

They has 3 different buss/trolleys circling the 3 venues dropping people off and picking them up around. It was so nice and convenient and fun!

Some other group was running their own Straw Poll at Pioneer Park. I asked a guy at the table a question and he said, " I don't know. I do know that you Ron paul people are Highly organized though!

(We blew everyone into Shock and AWE HARD!)

At Vinoy Park, where the GOP Straw Poll and BBQ was, the crowed was 95% Ron Paul supporters.

For 3 hours, from any venue, you could look up and see the Ron Paul air plane banner flying, you could look out at the water from either park and see Huge Ron Paul boats, and as dusk settled in, there were two planes flying the lighted Ron Paul signs over head.

The only other candidate signs at the straw Paul were for Rudy and Mitt. No signs for Huckabee, McCain, Thompson, Tancredo, or Hunter, nor even a supporter wearing a T-shirt or button of theirs was present.

There were around 1,000 RP supporters circling in and out, and maybe 20 Mitt and 20 Rudy supporters at the Straw Poll total.

We must've creamed it on the straw poll, although, one Mitt Supporter had 300-600 tickets and they let people vote as many times as they had tickets for. When you get the results Romney's and Rudys numbers will have come from just 20 people voting hundreds of times over. ( talk about spamming the polls)

Ron Paul was the IT man of the Day. Total domination of a 1 mile radius, on Land, in the Air and by Sea.

Paul had his own, Navy Airforce and Army there!lol

We dominated so hard, that when Mitts sons went up to make a speach for him, the RP supporters drwoned the first one out screaming for Ron Paul, and Mitts kids just gave up and left. They had no supporters there and they knew it.

None of the candidates were there either. Lots of RP supporters were giving speeches for RP though.

Outside of Mahaffey Theatre, during the pre debate sign waving, the only other Republican supporters there was a small group of maybe 20 tops for Rudy. No one else had supporters anywhere outside of the Theatre.

We had a group of hundreds scattered about into small groups. They said we could be heard from Blocks away chanting for Ron Paul.

During RPs post debate speech at the Palladium Theatre, he told us that Rudy went to make some small talk with him after the debate, and said, " You have a lot of Supporters" Paul said back, " And this is only the beggining" ;)

They had the Palladium theatre decked out beautifully for Paul. It was a gorgeous building (perfect spot for the next President of the U.S. of A to give a speech at) . They had these GIANT verticle banners hanging down between the front collums, with spot lights on them. Just gorgeous it was!

For those of us who didn't have tickets into the debate, it was so much fun watching it in that Theatre together. We were at maximum capacity in there 800, and we could and did BOO loudly at the other candidates with people shouting LIAR at them when they were lying, (lol) and cheered wildly every time they just showed a picture of Paul.

After we went outside for more sign wavings here and there to catch the crowds leaving the debate, until Paul showed up to give his speech. It was 11:30 on a week day night and the place was packed and AMPED for Paul!!!

Sadly, he didn't stay to shake hands or sign his autograph but oh well. It was the first time I saw him in person and it was wierd. I felt like I was inside of a youtube video. lol



I hope someone gets a lot of pictures and videos of the day posted for you all. Tons were taken.

We were there, in full force, strong loud and proud, tight and highly organized.

Never saw anything like before!

I'm still so pumped from this debate. All I wanted to do this morning was hop in my car and go to another Ron Paul rally (haha... RP Rally hopping). It was intoxicating!

[Cindy]

I'm still so pumped from this debate. All I wanted to do this morning was hop in my car and go to another Ron Paul rally (haha... RP Rally hopping). It was intoxicating!

Hey, thanks for posting those pictures Linux . It was so gorgeous.

Maria, me too. And guess what happened today. I got a call from our sign waving organizer. Nickelodean was doing a piece on campaiging children. He asked if we wanted to come out to do a sign waving for the piece and bring my daughter. It was thrown together last minute. 17 adults and 9 children were there. We had tons of signage. It was outside of a Target during rush hour.

It was so much fun again. About one in 60 cars were honking for Paul and 9 out of every Big Rig trucker honked for Paul. Most everyone there was also at the debate yesterday and they were all still high from it.

[ckhagen]

Maria, me too. And guess what happened today. I got a call from our sign waving organizer. Nickelodean was doing a piece on campaiging children. He asked if we wanted to come out to do a sign waving for the piece and bring my daughter. It was thrown together last minute. 17 adults and 9 children were there. We had tons of signage. It was outside of a Target during rush hour.


Did they happen to give you a timeline on when they might run that? They taped my babies at Pioneer Park (Nick News) and I signed releases, but forgot to ask her when it might air.

Channel 13 (Fox in Tampa) interviewed me as well, but I don't see anything on the website. Not sure if it aired, but it was a reasonably long interview.

[Cindy]

Did they happen to give you a timeline on when they might run that? They taped my babies at Pioneer Park (Nick News) and I signed releases, but forgot to ask her when it might air.

Channel 13 (Fox in Tampa) interviewed me as well, but I don't see anything on the website. Not sure if it aired, but it was a reasonably long interview.

She said January 13th at 9:00 P.M. is when it's scheduled to air. Could change though.

[ckhagen]

Thanks! Maybe my kids will be in the same piece :D Now I hope I remember to watch...

[randolphus maximus]

Nice job Cindy, I love reading write ups like this.:D Hopefully he'll make it out to the west coast again in the next couple of months.

[Maria]

Hey, thanks for posting those pictures Linux . It was so gorgeous.

Maria, me too. And guess what happened today. I got a call from our sign waving organizer. Nickelodean was doing a piece on campaiging children. He asked if we wanted to come out to do a sign waving for the piece and bring my daughter. It was thrown together last minute. 17 adults and 9 children were there. We had tons of signage. It was outside of a Target during rush hour.

It was so much fun again. About one in 60 cars were honking for Paul and 9 out of every Big Rig trucker honked for Paul. Most everyone there was also at the debate yesterday and they were all still high from it.

Incredible things are happening ... and this is just the beginning!

I loved ur debate experience story, I felt like I was relieving it again. Soooo cool :)