earlpyates
12-15-2007, 10:21 PM
Hi everyone, my name is Preston Yates and I am a student at Oregon State University. Right now, I am camaigning with 70 other students from all over the country in Iowa. What follows will be my (hopefully) daily blog of my experiences here in Iowa, on the campaign trail. I bought a video camera today and I will be loading videos to youtube daily as well, to give you all an idea of whats going on down here, on the ground in Iowa. What I'm posting now is the first four posts I haven't been able to send until now.
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December 13, 2007, 9:27 PM CST
Stuck in the Chicago O’Hare International Airport. My flight to Des Moines, Iowa has been pushed back half a dozen times. Originally scheduled to depart O’Hare at 8:38pm, the slated time now is 11:30, and will likely be pushed back further.
I am further mystified, yet again, by the apparent lack of wall sockets in the Chicago airport. Apparently the powers that be don’t like charging people’s laptop batteries. Unfortunately for me, my battery is three years old and holds about twenty minutes of charge, so the lack of a wall socket completely precluded me from using my laptop for anything entertaining for the duration of my intensely boring stay in this germ-covered hellhole of an airport.
December 14, 2007 1:36 AM CST
Well, the 275 people are now here. What a rush. We had a rally tonight with Ron Paul at the Des Moines room of the downtown Marriott. It was a blast - 300 students screaming and hooting and hollering. I videotaped the entire thing, and as soon as I can upload the footage to my laptop I'll be able to post it on youtube. My favorite thing about the rally, besides the Ron Paul "Constitution Coach" was that more kids cheered for the end of the federal reserve than the end of the drug war. I kinda had this deep-seeded impression that a lot of the kids would be RP supporters mainly for his stance on the drug war, and I was pleasantly surprised.
I got some really nice footage of the rally and the ride back to Camp Boone with 40 crazed supporters on a bus. Back at camp, we have 275 students staying for one night in a place where 35 stayed last week. Its nuts. As a team leader, new this week, I got to kick a girl out of the guy cabin (she wanted to stay with her boyfriend, but we had to put an end to that to stave off a massive influx of "freedom babies" next August.)
Either way, the massive influx of people coming in today(had to coordinate 65 people arriving into 4 different airports and 2 different bus stations) was hellish indeed. Down from coordinating 275 people, basic single-handedly, to getting to manage 85 people between four leaders, so its gonna be a breeze from here on out. Iowa can be ours, anything less than third place would seriously disappoint me(id probably cry).
Til later~
Luckily for me, having sat down at the “Manchurian Wok” for some high quality airport cuisine, I happened to notice that apparently the food court, of all places, has wall sockets for people with charge-challenged laptops such as myself. At the very least, I can entertain myself with an internet-free laptop (the O’Hare airport charges $10 a month for access to their WiFi).
(A note to the Chinese fast food gourmet: asking for a to-go container, even if you intend on eating ‘here’ lands you easily 50% more food than had you asked for the ‘for here’ container. Try it)
Getting back on topic, I am writing this daily blog of my journeys through Iowa spreading the truths of Ron Paul for two reasons.
1.) In order to get my political science field work credits for my three weeks in Iowa I have to write in a daily journal.
2.) Daily journals are boring, and I figured the best way to liven it up and make it worth writing in every day (as opposed to faking it all on the way home after the caucuses) would be to post it on the internet to give the other Ron Paul supporters throughout the country a little bit of a feel of what its like to be on the ground in Iowa.
Though I am not there yet, everything I have read points towards a strong finish by the Paul Campaign in the Jan. 3 caucuses. I’m going to hit up Best Buy or Circuit City sometime tomorrow morning and find the cheapest digital camera money can buy to make this blog a bit more than a daily compulsion to scramble letters on my laptop.
December 14, 2007, 10:56 AM CST
I will be spending the majority of today at the airport. Having arrived half a day before anyone else, the responsibility has fallen upon me to meet and greet all the arriving students at the airport. All of this is very exciting. Already I’ve met five Paul supporters from various parts of the country, and by the end of the day that number will be in the dozens. Quite shocking in comparison to the relative drought of ardent Paulites on my campus at Oregon State.
Tonight will be the first night at the YMCA camp in Boone. There will be 24 students staying at this camp for the next nine days. Last night we loaded 9 cases of bottled water, 4 boxes of pop tarts, 5 crates of Costco muffins, and a slew of other foodstuffs into the van - our breakfast for the next week. Each student is also receiving a pair of gift cards, $25 and $100 each, to spend on other food-related needs throughout the next week. Last night I bundled the gift cards into 150 packets of $125 increments. $18,750 worth of gift cards - more than enough for the first week’s influx of 90 students, but nowhere near the total amount required for the 250+ students who will be arriving on the 27th for the final push before the caucuses. The amount of money the campaign is spending on this effort is staggering. Jeff Frazee, the Students for Ron Paul liaison, told me the total cost of the student volunteer initiative in Iowa would easily exceed $100,000. No other candidate has anything remotely like this in the state (not including Romney’s 500 paid canvassers, that is). With the amount of manpower and resources thrown in our direction (six large boxes of campaign literature is being sent to each of the four student camps), I have the definite impression that this “Christmas with Ron Paul” push could really push his candidacy over the top in Iowa, garnering him third, or maybe even, second place. Such a finish would be absolutely astounding, and closely followed by the primaries in New Hampshire, could really thrust Dr. Paul into the presidency.
December 14, 2007, 11:15 PM CST
Nothing in my life could prepare me for just how cold Iowa is during December. A frigid sixteen degrees, which is obscene in a place like Oregon, seems to be the norm for Iowa this time of year.
Tomorrow morning, twenty-one students will leave the YMCA camp that we are temporarily calling home, and descend upon the town of Booneville, Iowa - population 14,000. The goal of the student effort here, in which over three-hundred students will have been a part of by the time the caucuses, is to touch half a million registered voters. Fourteen hour days for nine days in a row is the plan - dawn to dusk canvassing, and phone banking before sleep. We are the final hope for the Paul campaign in Iowa. If we achieve our goal of getting ten voters per precinct to caucus for Dr. Paul, he will do no worse than third in the state. 17,000 voters for national attention and front-runner status. We can, and will, succeed.
December 15, 2007, 9:57 PM CST
Today we did our first of our canvassing - let me tell you, Iowa is the coldest place in the world. Its going to be negative 10 degrees Fahrenheit tonight, and there is literally a 2-inch sheet of ice over absolutely everything.
We canvassed for six hours today in a balmy 15 degrees. The secret to staying warm is "if your feet are cold, put on a hat". Of the twenty-four of us, nearly everyone fell numerous times.
The biggest thing we learned today was that a Hillary sign on the front lawn doesn't preclude someone from being converted. After speaking to a very, very old man (who introduced me to old-fashioned chewing tobacco...wow) we started talking about his life, how much he likes football, how in his six years of high school he lose only one game, and eventually the conversation shifted to how little a bale of hay cost back there in 1952 - $2. What a perfect opportunity to bring up the Federal Reserve and our fiat money system.
After another ten minute segue on the subject of glaucoma, we finally asked him, point blank, if he would caucus for Ron Paul, and he informed us that his wife was a Hillary supporter and that he had one of her signs on his lawn(or, big thing of snow) - this, after a morning of skipping houses with Hillary signs on our canvassing, changed our minds completely about our approach. In the end, he ended up taking a button from Justin, one of my fellow campaigners, and we pinned it to his hat and he said he planned to go home and anger his wife by ripping the Hillary sign out of the law. It was a glorious victory.
All in all, today, 24 of us fully canvassed inside the city limits of Boontown, population 12,000. Tomorrow we're taking the morning off due to the very rigorous church schedule of Iowans, and we will be phone banking the rest of the afternoon. Monday, we're heading to Des Moines. Between the four camps throughout the state, we plan on touching 500,000 people in person or through campaign literature in the next two weeks. 17,000 Iowans, just 17,000, caucusing for Ron Paul will lead to at very worst a 3rd place finish. This goal can be achieved by no more than ten votes per precinct. I think we will finish third in Iowa, behind Huckabee and Romney, and if Huckabee's ridiculous surge continues and he steals more and more votes from Romney, we could place second. January third will be a momentous occassion, as will the Boston Tea Part Anniversary, which begins in forty minutes.
December 16, 2007, 7:06 PM CST
Wow. The. Money bomb. We've been watching the ticker on internet-capable cell-phones and laptops with cellular broadband cards all day as we've been canvassing. It's absolutely astounding. As of 7:07PM CST, we've hit $4.75 million. Absolutely astounding.
I had three wishes for today.
1.) At least $8 million raised by the money bomb, which very well may happen.
2.) I would get permission(and videotape) placing a Ron Paul 2008 sign in the yard of someone who already had a Hillary sign.
3.) I would run into the very, very old and crazy man we met yesterday and I wrote about above.
So far I'm 2 for 3. I bought a super-cheap digital video camera yesterday so that I could take some video recordings of my stay here in Iowa and post them on youtube before the caucuses. I had it in the pocket of my gortex winter coat, and spent all day praying I wouldn't regret carrying it on me when I fell on the ice and broke it into a million pieces.
Right at the end of our canvassing today, freezing cold, chapped lips, ready to head back to the car as dusk rapidly approached, me and my partner, a highschool student named Matt who I'm buddied with this week(so the underaged young man doesn't get himself killed), see a lone Hillary sign at the end of the aptly named Clinton street. So we decide we will finish on this street, and that Hillary supporter will be our last house, and maybe our goal of putting a Ron Paul sign next to a Hillary sign(or replacing a Hillary sign) would become a reality.
As we walked down the street, a man came out of the house and started working on the Christmas tree lights. He turned, looked up, and said "HEY!! What are you boys doing up there?!"
So we think to ourselves..."Oh shit, another angry Paul-hater", of which there are a sizeable amount. As we get closer, we realize, its no one other than Bob Smith, chewing tobacco pouch in hand, maroon spittle running down his chin - the Hillary sign on the lawn was his wife's, and I got to videotape the planting of our Ron Paul yard sign in a more prominent position on the lawn. It was glorious. My buddy Matt had to go to the bathroom really badly, and we were too scared of him peeing behind someone's wood shed while covered in Ron Paul buttons and literature, so he went into Bob Smith's house and went to the bathroom, and I got to do a lovely videotaped interview with the prototypical Iowa caucus voter, got to meet his dogs, see his newly remodeled basement - it was glorious to say the least. Needless to say, a very fun Youtube video will be posted by the New Year.
Until tomorrow-
December 18th, 2007, 12:20 AM CST
Today was one of the most monumental days of my life, as I had the luck of getting to meet Dr. Paul at the Des Moines office. He went out of his way to spend a half an hour with just the thirty of us here, and I got film of all of it, it was quite the show. One of the girls here cried when she found out he was coming to meet us, and then cried again when he actually started speaking, it was pretty amazing (and I got it video taped).
Having finished canvassing the 10,000 person town of Boone, the camp, which has now grown to 34 members, split up today to begin our canvassing of Des Moines and Ames. It warmed up to a balmy 33 degrees today, and we had way too many clothes and we were sweating up a storm, after being confronted with nearly sub-zero weather earlier this week.
Its pretty depressing canvassing during the week - with no one home we just do literature drops and dont knock on any doors and don't actually have the ability to talk to people on the ground in Iowa, and spread the word Dr. Paul. Today I saw a number of people with signs decrying military spending yet with Edwards and Hillary stickers, despite the fact they want to expand the federal government further and further, and have yet to mention any plans of withdrawing troops from our military bases in over a hundred countries throughout the world, yet I was completely incapable of actually talking to these people - simply because they weren't home. At one of the houses I fought the impulse to leave an entire stack of Ron Paul pamplets, like some sort of quantifyable exclamation point to how badly I wanted to speak to this person and change his/her mind.
Either way, its late, and time to sleep so that we can get up early and get back into the Iowa snow. Anyone who is interested in coming to Iowa to help campaign for the second session, which is Dec. 27 to January 4, send me a private message with your name and phone number and I'll make sure you get a call.
RON PAUL Y'ALL
December 19th, 12:22 AM CST
Fourteen hour day, doing menial labor at the campaign office - and the best thing is it didn't even really feel like work. Hanging out with great, like-minded people is truly an amazing thing. I am so happy here that I never want to go home.
That being said, I'm completely beat. The only time we really had off today is when we took a 10 minute break to stand on the mostly-deserted streets of Des Moines at around 9:30 and wave signs, which was a wild success. Of about the 30 cars that drove by, easily ten of them honked at us.
Did some phone banking today, and actually called an ex-professor of economics who taught at University of Wisconsin and was running for the House in his district in Southern Iowa as a "Ron Paul Republican", and I spoke to him for almost fifteen minutes, knowing that this man, running on Dr. Paul's platform, had a serious chance of winning a congressional seat, and it gave me hope that I had been looking for a few days.
Let me explain this: things on the ground look extremely good for Ron Paul in Iowa. A first place finish is probably a longshot - the state is 50% evangelical christians - this is Huckabee territory. However, we are seeing far more grassroots support for Paul here than anyone else, and with a helpful snowstorm on the 3rd of January, we could easily net second place in the state.
The source of my new-found hope is the realization that there is hope for this country even if Ron Paul loses the nomination race. Before talking this congressional hopeful on the phone today, I figured Ron Paul was the last hope for the American Republic. Now, however, I've come to the realization he has inspired a massive grass roots organization that is spawning "Ron Paul Republican" candidates all over the country, and they can easily effect the national legislature and are far more electable on a district-by-district basis (look at Dennis Kucinich).
Either way, I have to sleep, as I am completely exhausted. Until tomorrow~
December 19th, 2007, 10:06pm PST
Spent another day in the campaign office today, doing a lot of phone banking. There's one thing that is constantly being reiterated to the students and other volunteers on the ground here in Iowa - the Iowa caucuses are all about organization. Very little else matters other than identifying your voters and getting them into the caucuses. Ron Paul is now in a three-way tie for third in Iowa, and we have 70 students on the ground here this week, and 202+ coming in on the 27th. We are going to touch nearly everyone in this state with either phone or literature drops. Everytime I phone bank, and I find a new Ron Paul supporter who's going to go out to the caucus and tell all his friend, I just see the number ticking down in my head. 17,000, 16,999, 16,998...when we reach 17,000 caucus voters we are guaranteed third place, the perfect springboard into winning New Hampshire and maybe even running away with this entire thing(Ron Paul is polling at 11% in South Carolina right now).
The makings of a fantastic Youtube video are slowly becoming a reality. I'm gonna try to con my parents out of a few hundred bucks to help me buy a new laptop(this one is a terrible piece of antiquated junk) so that I can edit over our four day break during Christmas.
One thing I can't state enough is exactly just how impressive our organization is here on the ground. The Huckabee offices, which share our office space, have maybe five or six full time staffers in the office all the time, whereas we have a slew of staffers of volunteers that number easily 20, not counting the huge amounts of students throughout the state and in the office spreading the good word of Dr. Paul. While we go door to door, trying to hit half a million people with Paul's campaign literature, the Huckabee Jesus-children hand out candycanes wishing potential voters a "Merry Christmas". Huckabee will probably win this state - Iowa is overwhelming evangelical Christians - but I am very confident in the ability of the Paul campaign to come in second in this decisive contest. To have a second-place finish in Iowa be followed by a win in New Hampshire and a strong showing in South Carolina going into Super Tuesday - it could be incredible.
Until tomorrow~
December 21, 2007, 12:49 PM CST
Well today was an interesting day on a number of accounts. Firstly, Dr. Paul is tied for 3rd place here in Iowa now, with Thompson and Giuliani. We're in the process of finishing up our week 2 lists for the students for Ron Paul christmas vacation, and the list is 256 names long. This organizational effort on the ground here is going to swing us, in my estimation, to a sure-fire 3rd place, if not knocking out Mitt Romney for second place.
The other thing that happened today was that Tom Tancredo dropped out of the race. I was lucky enough to be one of the two to attend. The Iowa campaign chair was excited at the idea of picking up some of his staffers to possibly garner us some support with Tancredo supporters here in Iowa (Ron Paul being a fairly strict anti-illegal immigration candidate). Me and my buddy Matt slipped into the Tancredo crowd, which was sadly devoid of many supporters at all, it was almost entirely media.
We took our Ron Paul buttons off, and armed with a list, we attempted to slip through the crowd and look for the people that we were supposed to identify, but with the complete lack of Tancredo supporters there(there were maybe half a dozen) it was slim pickings.
All of a sudden, Bay Buchanan walks by me, followed by Tom Tancredo. THis would truly be my first observed presidential drop out. Tancredo got up to the microphone, started talking about the issue, his issue, illegal immigration. He seemed upbeat, he talked about how his candidacy, though it never had a chance of success, was truly bringing the issue of illegal immigration to the forefront of politics. I tended to agree with him.
Then came the time for him to announce who he would be endorsing. Everyone at the Des Moines office assumed it would be Fred Thompson, and we were shocked to find him endorsing Mitt Romney. It absolutely blew us away. THe Tancredo supporters standing to my left started crying and the man shook his head repeatedly(no joke). I understand the political calculations associated with picking Romney, but it was a very bad cal. Ron Paul will be getting a large chunk of Tancredo's supporters, without a doubt.
Tancredo himself, as he announced his endorsement of Romney, wouldnt even look up at the cameras. He looked like a completely broken man. I felt bad for the guy, he wanted to endorse someone else, but his considerations for his upcoming senate campaign and the political implications of supporting someone who was a "non-winner", I guess meaning Fred Thompson or Ron Paul, just wasn't palatable for his political taste. All that being said, it was a very interesting experience.
I spent about 8 hours today working on the camp assignments for Ron Paul's CHristmas Vacation session 2. It's gonna be a blast, 256 students have RSVP'd, which is a substantial number capable of blanketting the entire state with campaign literature and phone calls leading up to the caucuses. One thing I keep hearing over and over again is how Iowa is all about organization. It's very difficult to get supporters out at a certain time, on a certain day, in the middle of winter. Organization is the name of the game, and our organizational strength on the ground here is easily 25 times Huckabee's or any other republican candidates. We are going to do well in Iowa.
Until tomorrow.~
December 22, 2007, 1:20AM CST
Not much to update for today. Spent a long day in the office updating the camp assignment lists for next week. Getting ready to spend a four-day weekend here at Camp Boone w/ no one to drive us around. We're gonna stock up on supplies and camp out and hope we don't freeze to death. I'll post more later.
Until tomorrow~
December 23, 2007, 12:13AM CST
Hillary Clinton is one of the most vile and disgusting people to ever walk the face of the planet. Today during our sixth fourteen-hour marathon office session, one of the student volunteers, Brittany, called a sweet little old lady, and through the course of the conservation, found out that this little lady was extremely excited about an upcoming party she was invited to. The date? January 3rd. Hillary Clinton's campaign staff had invited her. The party? The Democratic Caucus. The Hillary Campaign was literally calling little old ladies and inviting them to a "party". While this lady was being exploited for her vote, dozens of paid Hillary staffers were likely in the midst of calling other little old ladies and conning them into attending similar "parties" at local precinct headquarters around the State of Iowa. Legal, but unethical - Hillary Clinton's motto.
Session 1 of Ron Paul's Christmas Vacation is now officially over. The first cars have left for the airport now, and its time for me, Nickle, and Justin to hunker down and get ready to spend four days here in the woods. 270 students will be here for next session if none drop out, though some likely will. Students will be the deciding factor for Dr. Paul here in Iowa, and I wanted to personally thank Jeff Frazee, the national youth coordinator, on this page for putting in the hundreds, if not thousands of hours, it took to plan and execute this awesome event here. This will like be my last post before the 27th, but I'll definitely be back. Keep the Ron Paul Revolution alive, kids!
December 27th, 2007, 12:30PM CST
267 students from 48 states and a number of countries are descending upon Iowa today. I've spent the 4 days working on their camp assignments, and we just barely got them out at the last moment. Throughout the State of Iowa, we have six camps, two at 28 people, one at 10, one at 44, one at 82 and one at 87! Right now we have rotating cycles of van pickups at four different airports and three bus stations. Quite an undertaking, logistics are exhausting.
Tonight, we're having a rally with all the students and Dr. Ron Paul himself. Media from all over the state and the nation will be present - its gonna be a blast. 250+ screaming students(some will get here too late tonight to attend the rally) waving signs and making noise for the national media will get us some nice attention. Then, all 267 students are going to be staying the night at YMCA Camp Boone in one huge room - personal space will be limited.
Not much else to talk about now, I'll post late tonight about the rally. I've been trying to get a video made for the last week or so but I've been unable to find a way to connect my video camera to my laptop. Hopefully I'll get it made and posted before the Jan. 3 caucus, but maybe not. Until later~
December 30, 2007, 7:38PM CST
Sorry I haven't updated for a few days, been insanely busy. The last few days, 275 students all across the state of Iowa have been creating freedom explosions of campaign literature all over the state. We're attempting to blanket every single voter in every major city (probably 90% of the state's total population) in the days leading up to the caucuses. Ron Paul supporters are absolutely everywhere. Ran into two of them at the diner where we were eating lunch, and we converted our waitress of two days in a row by telling her how Ron Paul wants to end the taxation of tips. She started by telling us how her coworkers were telling her "anyone but Ron" but she was an instant sell when she realized that under a Ron Paul presidency she'd be keeping 100% of her tips, and hopefully, 100% of her income. We have been canvassing in very heavily democratic neighborhoods (I've come to the realization that Iowa is a predominantly blue state) but its incredible the number of Ron Paul signs we see wedged between the Hillary, Obama and Edwards yards. The Ron Paul signage we've seen in Des Moines easily outstrips all other Republican candidates. I've had the time of my life going up to Joe Biden houses and telling them "Yeah, Biden's my #2 choice (for reasons I won't get into here) but here's why I support Ron Paul instead!" A lot of them are taken aback by a volunteer for a Republican who says that a Dem is his #2 choice, and they accept what I say a lot better. I get a lot of people that also say "I like Ron Paul but I'm a Democrat" and similar tactics work very well.
We've been hitting lots of high density, low wealth apartment buildings - hitting every single domicile in a place that's likely never before been hit by campaign literature. I'd wager that a disenfranchised, lower class voter who's never received personal attention at their home before might be quite swayed by Ron Paul's message of personal freedom, liberty, and equality, especially considering no one else bothers to canvas people who don't own their own houses.
I'll write more tomorrow, not much to say today, just been a lot of canvassing.
i reached the maximum length of this field so I have begun adding new blog posts down about 5 posts, so check there for updates
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December 13, 2007, 9:27 PM CST
Stuck in the Chicago O’Hare International Airport. My flight to Des Moines, Iowa has been pushed back half a dozen times. Originally scheduled to depart O’Hare at 8:38pm, the slated time now is 11:30, and will likely be pushed back further.
I am further mystified, yet again, by the apparent lack of wall sockets in the Chicago airport. Apparently the powers that be don’t like charging people’s laptop batteries. Unfortunately for me, my battery is three years old and holds about twenty minutes of charge, so the lack of a wall socket completely precluded me from using my laptop for anything entertaining for the duration of my intensely boring stay in this germ-covered hellhole of an airport.
December 14, 2007 1:36 AM CST
Well, the 275 people are now here. What a rush. We had a rally tonight with Ron Paul at the Des Moines room of the downtown Marriott. It was a blast - 300 students screaming and hooting and hollering. I videotaped the entire thing, and as soon as I can upload the footage to my laptop I'll be able to post it on youtube. My favorite thing about the rally, besides the Ron Paul "Constitution Coach" was that more kids cheered for the end of the federal reserve than the end of the drug war. I kinda had this deep-seeded impression that a lot of the kids would be RP supporters mainly for his stance on the drug war, and I was pleasantly surprised.
I got some really nice footage of the rally and the ride back to Camp Boone with 40 crazed supporters on a bus. Back at camp, we have 275 students staying for one night in a place where 35 stayed last week. Its nuts. As a team leader, new this week, I got to kick a girl out of the guy cabin (she wanted to stay with her boyfriend, but we had to put an end to that to stave off a massive influx of "freedom babies" next August.)
Either way, the massive influx of people coming in today(had to coordinate 65 people arriving into 4 different airports and 2 different bus stations) was hellish indeed. Down from coordinating 275 people, basic single-handedly, to getting to manage 85 people between four leaders, so its gonna be a breeze from here on out. Iowa can be ours, anything less than third place would seriously disappoint me(id probably cry).
Til later~
Luckily for me, having sat down at the “Manchurian Wok” for some high quality airport cuisine, I happened to notice that apparently the food court, of all places, has wall sockets for people with charge-challenged laptops such as myself. At the very least, I can entertain myself with an internet-free laptop (the O’Hare airport charges $10 a month for access to their WiFi).
(A note to the Chinese fast food gourmet: asking for a to-go container, even if you intend on eating ‘here’ lands you easily 50% more food than had you asked for the ‘for here’ container. Try it)
Getting back on topic, I am writing this daily blog of my journeys through Iowa spreading the truths of Ron Paul for two reasons.
1.) In order to get my political science field work credits for my three weeks in Iowa I have to write in a daily journal.
2.) Daily journals are boring, and I figured the best way to liven it up and make it worth writing in every day (as opposed to faking it all on the way home after the caucuses) would be to post it on the internet to give the other Ron Paul supporters throughout the country a little bit of a feel of what its like to be on the ground in Iowa.
Though I am not there yet, everything I have read points towards a strong finish by the Paul Campaign in the Jan. 3 caucuses. I’m going to hit up Best Buy or Circuit City sometime tomorrow morning and find the cheapest digital camera money can buy to make this blog a bit more than a daily compulsion to scramble letters on my laptop.
December 14, 2007, 10:56 AM CST
I will be spending the majority of today at the airport. Having arrived half a day before anyone else, the responsibility has fallen upon me to meet and greet all the arriving students at the airport. All of this is very exciting. Already I’ve met five Paul supporters from various parts of the country, and by the end of the day that number will be in the dozens. Quite shocking in comparison to the relative drought of ardent Paulites on my campus at Oregon State.
Tonight will be the first night at the YMCA camp in Boone. There will be 24 students staying at this camp for the next nine days. Last night we loaded 9 cases of bottled water, 4 boxes of pop tarts, 5 crates of Costco muffins, and a slew of other foodstuffs into the van - our breakfast for the next week. Each student is also receiving a pair of gift cards, $25 and $100 each, to spend on other food-related needs throughout the next week. Last night I bundled the gift cards into 150 packets of $125 increments. $18,750 worth of gift cards - more than enough for the first week’s influx of 90 students, but nowhere near the total amount required for the 250+ students who will be arriving on the 27th for the final push before the caucuses. The amount of money the campaign is spending on this effort is staggering. Jeff Frazee, the Students for Ron Paul liaison, told me the total cost of the student volunteer initiative in Iowa would easily exceed $100,000. No other candidate has anything remotely like this in the state (not including Romney’s 500 paid canvassers, that is). With the amount of manpower and resources thrown in our direction (six large boxes of campaign literature is being sent to each of the four student camps), I have the definite impression that this “Christmas with Ron Paul” push could really push his candidacy over the top in Iowa, garnering him third, or maybe even, second place. Such a finish would be absolutely astounding, and closely followed by the primaries in New Hampshire, could really thrust Dr. Paul into the presidency.
December 14, 2007, 11:15 PM CST
Nothing in my life could prepare me for just how cold Iowa is during December. A frigid sixteen degrees, which is obscene in a place like Oregon, seems to be the norm for Iowa this time of year.
Tomorrow morning, twenty-one students will leave the YMCA camp that we are temporarily calling home, and descend upon the town of Booneville, Iowa - population 14,000. The goal of the student effort here, in which over three-hundred students will have been a part of by the time the caucuses, is to touch half a million registered voters. Fourteen hour days for nine days in a row is the plan - dawn to dusk canvassing, and phone banking before sleep. We are the final hope for the Paul campaign in Iowa. If we achieve our goal of getting ten voters per precinct to caucus for Dr. Paul, he will do no worse than third in the state. 17,000 voters for national attention and front-runner status. We can, and will, succeed.
December 15, 2007, 9:57 PM CST
Today we did our first of our canvassing - let me tell you, Iowa is the coldest place in the world. Its going to be negative 10 degrees Fahrenheit tonight, and there is literally a 2-inch sheet of ice over absolutely everything.
We canvassed for six hours today in a balmy 15 degrees. The secret to staying warm is "if your feet are cold, put on a hat". Of the twenty-four of us, nearly everyone fell numerous times.
The biggest thing we learned today was that a Hillary sign on the front lawn doesn't preclude someone from being converted. After speaking to a very, very old man (who introduced me to old-fashioned chewing tobacco...wow) we started talking about his life, how much he likes football, how in his six years of high school he lose only one game, and eventually the conversation shifted to how little a bale of hay cost back there in 1952 - $2. What a perfect opportunity to bring up the Federal Reserve and our fiat money system.
After another ten minute segue on the subject of glaucoma, we finally asked him, point blank, if he would caucus for Ron Paul, and he informed us that his wife was a Hillary supporter and that he had one of her signs on his lawn(or, big thing of snow) - this, after a morning of skipping houses with Hillary signs on our canvassing, changed our minds completely about our approach. In the end, he ended up taking a button from Justin, one of my fellow campaigners, and we pinned it to his hat and he said he planned to go home and anger his wife by ripping the Hillary sign out of the law. It was a glorious victory.
All in all, today, 24 of us fully canvassed inside the city limits of Boontown, population 12,000. Tomorrow we're taking the morning off due to the very rigorous church schedule of Iowans, and we will be phone banking the rest of the afternoon. Monday, we're heading to Des Moines. Between the four camps throughout the state, we plan on touching 500,000 people in person or through campaign literature in the next two weeks. 17,000 Iowans, just 17,000, caucusing for Ron Paul will lead to at very worst a 3rd place finish. This goal can be achieved by no more than ten votes per precinct. I think we will finish third in Iowa, behind Huckabee and Romney, and if Huckabee's ridiculous surge continues and he steals more and more votes from Romney, we could place second. January third will be a momentous occassion, as will the Boston Tea Part Anniversary, which begins in forty minutes.
December 16, 2007, 7:06 PM CST
Wow. The. Money bomb. We've been watching the ticker on internet-capable cell-phones and laptops with cellular broadband cards all day as we've been canvassing. It's absolutely astounding. As of 7:07PM CST, we've hit $4.75 million. Absolutely astounding.
I had three wishes for today.
1.) At least $8 million raised by the money bomb, which very well may happen.
2.) I would get permission(and videotape) placing a Ron Paul 2008 sign in the yard of someone who already had a Hillary sign.
3.) I would run into the very, very old and crazy man we met yesterday and I wrote about above.
So far I'm 2 for 3. I bought a super-cheap digital video camera yesterday so that I could take some video recordings of my stay here in Iowa and post them on youtube before the caucuses. I had it in the pocket of my gortex winter coat, and spent all day praying I wouldn't regret carrying it on me when I fell on the ice and broke it into a million pieces.
Right at the end of our canvassing today, freezing cold, chapped lips, ready to head back to the car as dusk rapidly approached, me and my partner, a highschool student named Matt who I'm buddied with this week(so the underaged young man doesn't get himself killed), see a lone Hillary sign at the end of the aptly named Clinton street. So we decide we will finish on this street, and that Hillary supporter will be our last house, and maybe our goal of putting a Ron Paul sign next to a Hillary sign(or replacing a Hillary sign) would become a reality.
As we walked down the street, a man came out of the house and started working on the Christmas tree lights. He turned, looked up, and said "HEY!! What are you boys doing up there?!"
So we think to ourselves..."Oh shit, another angry Paul-hater", of which there are a sizeable amount. As we get closer, we realize, its no one other than Bob Smith, chewing tobacco pouch in hand, maroon spittle running down his chin - the Hillary sign on the lawn was his wife's, and I got to videotape the planting of our Ron Paul yard sign in a more prominent position on the lawn. It was glorious. My buddy Matt had to go to the bathroom really badly, and we were too scared of him peeing behind someone's wood shed while covered in Ron Paul buttons and literature, so he went into Bob Smith's house and went to the bathroom, and I got to do a lovely videotaped interview with the prototypical Iowa caucus voter, got to meet his dogs, see his newly remodeled basement - it was glorious to say the least. Needless to say, a very fun Youtube video will be posted by the New Year.
Until tomorrow-
December 18th, 2007, 12:20 AM CST
Today was one of the most monumental days of my life, as I had the luck of getting to meet Dr. Paul at the Des Moines office. He went out of his way to spend a half an hour with just the thirty of us here, and I got film of all of it, it was quite the show. One of the girls here cried when she found out he was coming to meet us, and then cried again when he actually started speaking, it was pretty amazing (and I got it video taped).
Having finished canvassing the 10,000 person town of Boone, the camp, which has now grown to 34 members, split up today to begin our canvassing of Des Moines and Ames. It warmed up to a balmy 33 degrees today, and we had way too many clothes and we were sweating up a storm, after being confronted with nearly sub-zero weather earlier this week.
Its pretty depressing canvassing during the week - with no one home we just do literature drops and dont knock on any doors and don't actually have the ability to talk to people on the ground in Iowa, and spread the word Dr. Paul. Today I saw a number of people with signs decrying military spending yet with Edwards and Hillary stickers, despite the fact they want to expand the federal government further and further, and have yet to mention any plans of withdrawing troops from our military bases in over a hundred countries throughout the world, yet I was completely incapable of actually talking to these people - simply because they weren't home. At one of the houses I fought the impulse to leave an entire stack of Ron Paul pamplets, like some sort of quantifyable exclamation point to how badly I wanted to speak to this person and change his/her mind.
Either way, its late, and time to sleep so that we can get up early and get back into the Iowa snow. Anyone who is interested in coming to Iowa to help campaign for the second session, which is Dec. 27 to January 4, send me a private message with your name and phone number and I'll make sure you get a call.
RON PAUL Y'ALL
December 19th, 12:22 AM CST
Fourteen hour day, doing menial labor at the campaign office - and the best thing is it didn't even really feel like work. Hanging out with great, like-minded people is truly an amazing thing. I am so happy here that I never want to go home.
That being said, I'm completely beat. The only time we really had off today is when we took a 10 minute break to stand on the mostly-deserted streets of Des Moines at around 9:30 and wave signs, which was a wild success. Of about the 30 cars that drove by, easily ten of them honked at us.
Did some phone banking today, and actually called an ex-professor of economics who taught at University of Wisconsin and was running for the House in his district in Southern Iowa as a "Ron Paul Republican", and I spoke to him for almost fifteen minutes, knowing that this man, running on Dr. Paul's platform, had a serious chance of winning a congressional seat, and it gave me hope that I had been looking for a few days.
Let me explain this: things on the ground look extremely good for Ron Paul in Iowa. A first place finish is probably a longshot - the state is 50% evangelical christians - this is Huckabee territory. However, we are seeing far more grassroots support for Paul here than anyone else, and with a helpful snowstorm on the 3rd of January, we could easily net second place in the state.
The source of my new-found hope is the realization that there is hope for this country even if Ron Paul loses the nomination race. Before talking this congressional hopeful on the phone today, I figured Ron Paul was the last hope for the American Republic. Now, however, I've come to the realization he has inspired a massive grass roots organization that is spawning "Ron Paul Republican" candidates all over the country, and they can easily effect the national legislature and are far more electable on a district-by-district basis (look at Dennis Kucinich).
Either way, I have to sleep, as I am completely exhausted. Until tomorrow~
December 19th, 2007, 10:06pm PST
Spent another day in the campaign office today, doing a lot of phone banking. There's one thing that is constantly being reiterated to the students and other volunteers on the ground here in Iowa - the Iowa caucuses are all about organization. Very little else matters other than identifying your voters and getting them into the caucuses. Ron Paul is now in a three-way tie for third in Iowa, and we have 70 students on the ground here this week, and 202+ coming in on the 27th. We are going to touch nearly everyone in this state with either phone or literature drops. Everytime I phone bank, and I find a new Ron Paul supporter who's going to go out to the caucus and tell all his friend, I just see the number ticking down in my head. 17,000, 16,999, 16,998...when we reach 17,000 caucus voters we are guaranteed third place, the perfect springboard into winning New Hampshire and maybe even running away with this entire thing(Ron Paul is polling at 11% in South Carolina right now).
The makings of a fantastic Youtube video are slowly becoming a reality. I'm gonna try to con my parents out of a few hundred bucks to help me buy a new laptop(this one is a terrible piece of antiquated junk) so that I can edit over our four day break during Christmas.
One thing I can't state enough is exactly just how impressive our organization is here on the ground. The Huckabee offices, which share our office space, have maybe five or six full time staffers in the office all the time, whereas we have a slew of staffers of volunteers that number easily 20, not counting the huge amounts of students throughout the state and in the office spreading the good word of Dr. Paul. While we go door to door, trying to hit half a million people with Paul's campaign literature, the Huckabee Jesus-children hand out candycanes wishing potential voters a "Merry Christmas". Huckabee will probably win this state - Iowa is overwhelming evangelical Christians - but I am very confident in the ability of the Paul campaign to come in second in this decisive contest. To have a second-place finish in Iowa be followed by a win in New Hampshire and a strong showing in South Carolina going into Super Tuesday - it could be incredible.
Until tomorrow~
December 21, 2007, 12:49 PM CST
Well today was an interesting day on a number of accounts. Firstly, Dr. Paul is tied for 3rd place here in Iowa now, with Thompson and Giuliani. We're in the process of finishing up our week 2 lists for the students for Ron Paul christmas vacation, and the list is 256 names long. This organizational effort on the ground here is going to swing us, in my estimation, to a sure-fire 3rd place, if not knocking out Mitt Romney for second place.
The other thing that happened today was that Tom Tancredo dropped out of the race. I was lucky enough to be one of the two to attend. The Iowa campaign chair was excited at the idea of picking up some of his staffers to possibly garner us some support with Tancredo supporters here in Iowa (Ron Paul being a fairly strict anti-illegal immigration candidate). Me and my buddy Matt slipped into the Tancredo crowd, which was sadly devoid of many supporters at all, it was almost entirely media.
We took our Ron Paul buttons off, and armed with a list, we attempted to slip through the crowd and look for the people that we were supposed to identify, but with the complete lack of Tancredo supporters there(there were maybe half a dozen) it was slim pickings.
All of a sudden, Bay Buchanan walks by me, followed by Tom Tancredo. THis would truly be my first observed presidential drop out. Tancredo got up to the microphone, started talking about the issue, his issue, illegal immigration. He seemed upbeat, he talked about how his candidacy, though it never had a chance of success, was truly bringing the issue of illegal immigration to the forefront of politics. I tended to agree with him.
Then came the time for him to announce who he would be endorsing. Everyone at the Des Moines office assumed it would be Fred Thompson, and we were shocked to find him endorsing Mitt Romney. It absolutely blew us away. THe Tancredo supporters standing to my left started crying and the man shook his head repeatedly(no joke). I understand the political calculations associated with picking Romney, but it was a very bad cal. Ron Paul will be getting a large chunk of Tancredo's supporters, without a doubt.
Tancredo himself, as he announced his endorsement of Romney, wouldnt even look up at the cameras. He looked like a completely broken man. I felt bad for the guy, he wanted to endorse someone else, but his considerations for his upcoming senate campaign and the political implications of supporting someone who was a "non-winner", I guess meaning Fred Thompson or Ron Paul, just wasn't palatable for his political taste. All that being said, it was a very interesting experience.
I spent about 8 hours today working on the camp assignments for Ron Paul's CHristmas Vacation session 2. It's gonna be a blast, 256 students have RSVP'd, which is a substantial number capable of blanketting the entire state with campaign literature and phone calls leading up to the caucuses. One thing I keep hearing over and over again is how Iowa is all about organization. It's very difficult to get supporters out at a certain time, on a certain day, in the middle of winter. Organization is the name of the game, and our organizational strength on the ground here is easily 25 times Huckabee's or any other republican candidates. We are going to do well in Iowa.
Until tomorrow.~
December 22, 2007, 1:20AM CST
Not much to update for today. Spent a long day in the office updating the camp assignment lists for next week. Getting ready to spend a four-day weekend here at Camp Boone w/ no one to drive us around. We're gonna stock up on supplies and camp out and hope we don't freeze to death. I'll post more later.
Until tomorrow~
December 23, 2007, 12:13AM CST
Hillary Clinton is one of the most vile and disgusting people to ever walk the face of the planet. Today during our sixth fourteen-hour marathon office session, one of the student volunteers, Brittany, called a sweet little old lady, and through the course of the conservation, found out that this little lady was extremely excited about an upcoming party she was invited to. The date? January 3rd. Hillary Clinton's campaign staff had invited her. The party? The Democratic Caucus. The Hillary Campaign was literally calling little old ladies and inviting them to a "party". While this lady was being exploited for her vote, dozens of paid Hillary staffers were likely in the midst of calling other little old ladies and conning them into attending similar "parties" at local precinct headquarters around the State of Iowa. Legal, but unethical - Hillary Clinton's motto.
Session 1 of Ron Paul's Christmas Vacation is now officially over. The first cars have left for the airport now, and its time for me, Nickle, and Justin to hunker down and get ready to spend four days here in the woods. 270 students will be here for next session if none drop out, though some likely will. Students will be the deciding factor for Dr. Paul here in Iowa, and I wanted to personally thank Jeff Frazee, the national youth coordinator, on this page for putting in the hundreds, if not thousands of hours, it took to plan and execute this awesome event here. This will like be my last post before the 27th, but I'll definitely be back. Keep the Ron Paul Revolution alive, kids!
December 27th, 2007, 12:30PM CST
267 students from 48 states and a number of countries are descending upon Iowa today. I've spent the 4 days working on their camp assignments, and we just barely got them out at the last moment. Throughout the State of Iowa, we have six camps, two at 28 people, one at 10, one at 44, one at 82 and one at 87! Right now we have rotating cycles of van pickups at four different airports and three bus stations. Quite an undertaking, logistics are exhausting.
Tonight, we're having a rally with all the students and Dr. Ron Paul himself. Media from all over the state and the nation will be present - its gonna be a blast. 250+ screaming students(some will get here too late tonight to attend the rally) waving signs and making noise for the national media will get us some nice attention. Then, all 267 students are going to be staying the night at YMCA Camp Boone in one huge room - personal space will be limited.
Not much else to talk about now, I'll post late tonight about the rally. I've been trying to get a video made for the last week or so but I've been unable to find a way to connect my video camera to my laptop. Hopefully I'll get it made and posted before the Jan. 3 caucus, but maybe not. Until later~
December 30, 2007, 7:38PM CST
Sorry I haven't updated for a few days, been insanely busy. The last few days, 275 students all across the state of Iowa have been creating freedom explosions of campaign literature all over the state. We're attempting to blanket every single voter in every major city (probably 90% of the state's total population) in the days leading up to the caucuses. Ron Paul supporters are absolutely everywhere. Ran into two of them at the diner where we were eating lunch, and we converted our waitress of two days in a row by telling her how Ron Paul wants to end the taxation of tips. She started by telling us how her coworkers were telling her "anyone but Ron" but she was an instant sell when she realized that under a Ron Paul presidency she'd be keeping 100% of her tips, and hopefully, 100% of her income. We have been canvassing in very heavily democratic neighborhoods (I've come to the realization that Iowa is a predominantly blue state) but its incredible the number of Ron Paul signs we see wedged between the Hillary, Obama and Edwards yards. The Ron Paul signage we've seen in Des Moines easily outstrips all other Republican candidates. I've had the time of my life going up to Joe Biden houses and telling them "Yeah, Biden's my #2 choice (for reasons I won't get into here) but here's why I support Ron Paul instead!" A lot of them are taken aback by a volunteer for a Republican who says that a Dem is his #2 choice, and they accept what I say a lot better. I get a lot of people that also say "I like Ron Paul but I'm a Democrat" and similar tactics work very well.
We've been hitting lots of high density, low wealth apartment buildings - hitting every single domicile in a place that's likely never before been hit by campaign literature. I'd wager that a disenfranchised, lower class voter who's never received personal attention at their home before might be quite swayed by Ron Paul's message of personal freedom, liberty, and equality, especially considering no one else bothers to canvas people who don't own their own houses.
I'll write more tomorrow, not much to say today, just been a lot of canvassing.
i reached the maximum length of this field so I have begun adding new blog posts down about 5 posts, so check there for updates