The Real Story in Wyoming

[helmuth_hubener]

OK, so I have read through your negative threads and will now proceed to tell you the true inside story.

Wyoming did not go nearly so bad as you are making it out to be.

In my county, the Ron Paul delegate got 45.6% of the vote. Rejected by party hacks? Hardly. We stormed the barricades, crashed their party, and almost, *almost*, won it all. Unfortunately, Romney's guy got 54%. So we made a good show. If we could have switched over 4 Romney people or got 8 more of our people out, we would have had it (you can calculate this, but the result was 37-44). Oh well.

It was probably largely my fault for not doing enough early enough to get everyone registered and jumped throught the hoops back in December. We had several Ron Paul supporters that could not vote because they hadn't met registration deadlines and this and that, some that came to the caucus this Saturday (for moral support and to see it, man the table, help however they could; they couldn't vote, due to not doing aforementioned hoop-jumping). Including Wyo_Lars! Thanks Wyo_Lars!! Still, 45% is not exactly haplessly weak. We did well!

Even one delegate from Wyoming would have been major victory. Iowa gave Paul 2 delegates, after a ton of focus, time, campaigning there, millions of dollars spent, etc., and they are a much larger state with millions of people. If little Wyoming with just 1/2 million people could have got 1 delegate for Paul, especially when we've had very little attention from the national RP campaign, I would have considered that we pulled our own weight.

Alas, it was not to be for my county.

And finally, I saved the best (or maybe the worst) for last: in Fremont County we also lost... by one vote. One vote.

Ron Paul is a frontrunner, make no mistake. Non-frontrunners don't get 45% of the vote. We just weren't very organized. All you meetup people need to realize: you ARE the campaign.

If YOU do not make it happen, no one else will!

Own your turf.

Your county/town/suburb/whatever is Ron Paul territory now, as of this moment.

You will inundate your streets with signs.

You will put slim jims on car windows everywhere.

You will talk about Ron Paul to merchants you visit.

You will wear Ron Paul shirt and other gear everywhere you go.

This will help you to run across other supporters who will comment on your shirt.

You will get the contact info of any supporters you meet.

You will follow up with these supporters, get them out to your meetups, go over to their houses, associate with them and work with them.

You will research your own state's convoluted process and do everything you can to convice these people to do whatever is required to have their voice heard.

This election is yours.

You are legend.

You are a one-man campaign wrecking ball.

You can't win the nation. But you can win your county or equivalent 35,000 person area. Or you can at least come up 7 votes short like me. And you can then be sad and disappointed but you can at least know you can tell your grandchildren you did *something*.

I wish I could come on this forum bearing a delegate. I really wanted to. Eight votes made the difference between sweet, sweet elation and bitter. Bitter. Defeat. Do better than me. Go win. And remember to have fun. Be a legend.

[CoreyBowen999]

Damn So Close!!!

[Sey.Naci]

Wow. What an inspiring post!

[knappz]

Great post, thanks for giving us the inside scoop!



by one vote. One vote.

If YOU do not make it happen, no one else will!

Own your turf.

Your county/town/suburb/whatever is Ron Paul territory now, as of this moment.

You will inundate your streets with signs.

You will put slim jims on car windows everywhere.

You will talk about Ron Paul to merchants you visit.

You will wear Ron Paul shirt and other gear everywhere you go.

This will help you to run across other supporters who will comment on your shirt.

You will get the contact info of any supporters you meet.

You will follow up with these supporters, get them out to your meetups, go over to their houses, associate with them and work with them.

You will research your own state's convoluted process and do everything you can to convice these people to do whatever is required to have their voice heard.

KNOW IT, USE IT, OWN IT!
You are a patriot!
This is the kind of thinking that will bring us VICTORY!

[Wyo_Lars]

Did you stay long enough to hear the presidency pull? If you did how did it go.

For other states, listen to what we are saying here. Learn from it and don't let it happen again. Get deeply involved now, and get others.

[Crickett]

Inspiring and ringing with truth.

[Suzu]

Please re-post this inspiring message with a new title in Grassroots Central. It needs to be seen by all.

[rancher89]

posted to meetups in NC/SC thxs

[helmuth_hubener]

Did you stay long enough to hear the presidency poll? If you did how did it go?

Yep. We won.

[Joey Wahoo]

Thanks for your effort and hard work. You are a true patriot!

[Nailhead]

thank you we need this sticky

[xerxesdarius]

If this doesn't motivate you to get off the computer and get out there, nothing will. Good work with the little time you had. I hereby pledge to Ron Paul the hell out of my area.

[hankpyro]

Thanks Helmuth.

Dammit, this is OUR country.

[thisisgiparti]

posted to meetups in NC/SC thxs

WV asked for help, too. Their captains sound gun-ho, they are the first state of Super Tuesday, and their GOP corruption is the stuff of legend. The natives are angry about it and desperately want change. The sign coming into the state was changed from "Wild and Wonderful" to "Open For Business." NO LIE. People were MAD. You will find a receptive audience for Ron Paul's message in WV.

[helmuth_hubener]

No one is going to ask? OK, here were the straw poll results:


Mitt Romney -- 20 votes or 25.6%
John McCain -- 8 votes or 10.25%
Fred Thompson -- 8 votes or 10.25%
Duncan Hunter -- 7 votes or 8.9%
The Huckster -- 4 votes or 5.1%
Rudy Guiliani -- 3 votes or 3.8%
Undecided -- 3 votes or 3.8 %

and......

Ron Paul -- 25 votes or 32%

As you can see we did bring over some non-totally-Ron-Paul people to vote for our guy for national delegate (37 voted with us on that). But most of the supporters of other candidates went to the Romney guy. Only 20 actually had Romney as their first choice, apparently. Actually, some of the Romney people may have gone home before this straw poll, which was right after the delegate vote. Definitely someone went home, as the total voters were less for this straw poll than the real vote.

[Diana]

I'm glad other counties went better, although it still would have been nice to have gotten at least one delegate!

The straw poll they took in Natrona County was not very inspiring to say the least, but your post was, and I'm glad that there are parts of Wyoming where Paul does have a solid foothold.

And for the other states - make sure that your ducks are in a row with registrations and being on top of the process! Don't be left sitting on the sidelines like far too many Ron Paul supporters were today.

[OptionsTrader]

Want to make a difference?

GO HERE: (http://voters.ronpaul2008.com)
http://i15.tinypic.com/6tm3dsg.jpg (http://voters.ronpaul2008.com)

[Talcott]

Great Post!

[priest_of_syrinx]

I'll do what I can do at my age. Next time it snows, I'm writing his name again (not in yellow), and I'm going to buy some slim jims and spread them around. I'll probably buy another shirt to wear as well. Also, I signed up for 5 addresses in Florida.

I'm hoping I can help get North Dakota wrapped up, it's only about 600,000 people. I've got my parents and my global studies teacher already!!

[HOLLYWOOD]

OK, so I have read through your negative threads and will now proceed to tell you the true inside story.

Wyoming did not go nearly so bad as you are making it out to be.

In my county, the Ron Paul delegate got 45.6% of the vote. Rejected by party hacks? Hardly. We stormed the barricades, crashed their party, and almost, *almost*, won it all. Unfortunately, Romney's guy got 54%. So we made a good show. If we could have switched over 4 Romney people or got 8 more of our people out, we would have had it (you can calculate this, but the result was 37-44). Oh well.

It was probably largely my fault for not doing enough early enough to get everyone registered and jumped throught the hoops back in December. We had several Ron Paul supporters that could not vote because they hadn't met registration deadlines and this and that, some that came to the caucus this Saturday (for moral support and to see it, man the table, help however they could; they couldn't vote, due to not doing aforementioned hoop-jumping). Including Wyo_Lars! Thanks Wyo_Lars!! Still, 45% is not exactly haplessly weak. We did well!

And finally, I saved the best (or maybe the worst) for last: in Fremont County we also lost... by one vote. One vote.

Ron Paul is a frontrunner, make no mistake. Non-frontrunners don't get 45% of the vote. We just weren't very organized. All you meetup people need to realize: you ARE the campaign.

If YOU do not make it happen, no one else will!


That's ashame.. but you did your part!

Where was the campaign Staff in all this? Did they communicate, follow-up and ping for status and updates through the weeks and months? Did they provide the needed assistance to ensure you had everything needed to succeed?

Sorry

[Wyo_Lars]

We Are the Campaign Staff from here on. Period.

[helmuth_hubener]

I'm glad other counties went better, although it still would have been nice to have gotten at least one delegate!

The straw poll they took in Natrona County was not very inspiring to say the least, but your post was, and I'm glad that there are parts of Wyoming where Paul does have a solid foothold.

Re: What Happened in Natrona?

I think you guys down there were kind of disorganized, would you agree, Diana? I think it may have been lack of a leader who stepped up. No offense to you, Diana, if you are the leader. OK, I just checked and you are not. Phew! The meetup website http://ronpaul.meetup.com/cities/us/wy/casper/ shows there's 2 meetup groups in Casper -- one some guy in Virginia is the organizer, which is less than ideal (still, thanks guy in Virginia! We appreciate the effort; just needed to find an asst organizer who actually lives in Casper, which didn't happen) and then the other one is organized by Lance, who I know (he's a Free State Wyoming (http://freestatewyoming.org) guy, by the way) and who actually does live in Casper and is a good guy. But on the website it looks like he got started even later than I did! Anyway, I know a bunch of Casper guys who *should* be helping you out: Dave from the LP, Richard, PatriotAR15, etc.

That's one lesson from this: you really need a leader, a jump starter, and preferably as many leaders as possible. My county possibly (probably) wouldn't have done squat if it hadn't been for one heroic young man who drove by my house one day, saw my Ron Paul bumper sticker, stopped, and knocked on my door. That's it. He made it happen. We talked, he called and e-mailed a bunch of people and set up a meeting at a restaurant, we had a great turnout of maybe 15 people (this included some folks from out of county) and things went from there.

Then he left town, and the replacement leader he appointed kind of dropped the ball (didn't do anything) and finally decided he didn't want to do it. Meanwhile we lost a couple months. He did show up to the caucus today, though, so all is forgiven :D! So then I took over and the first couple events, almost no one showed up (me and one other guy). I finally figured out that here in Wyoming I needed to actually call the people on the phone and not rely on the meetup web site. Lo and behold, things started coming together.

Anyway, hopefully this narrative will serve to help some of y'all learn from our mistakes and do it better where you're at. If you are not yet the step-up-er in your area, then get with it and become the step-up-er!

Oh, and no, you can't have our yard signs. As far as I'm concerned , it's Ron Paul Revolution Forever. We never stop fighting, we never stop spreading the freedom message, and no mere election results can stop us. I think I'll leave my signs up. I like the idea of RP signs still everywhere in 2009. It'll confuse the enemy :).

[PhillyEagles11]

So did the people who got eliminated forced to pick one of the remaining candidates or were they allowed to abstain and not be counted?

[helmuth_hubener]

So did the people who got eliminated forced to pick one of the remaining candidates or were they allowed to abstain and not be counted?

You could abstain. You could walk out for that matter. This thing was pretty open-ended where I was at.

[helmuth_hubener]

Another positive spin on it:

In this process the Ron Paul delegate had to have an outright majority to win. The only way we could win was a raw, brute force, outnumbering of all the other candidates. If it was a normal situation where you just have to get the plurality to win, and all candidates are an option, Paul would have possibly won in my county, as he did win our straw poll.

Needless to say if Ron Paul gets 45% of the vote in NH, he will win. It was only under this system that he could get 45% and still lose, as all the mainstream people join together in neo-con brotherhood to beat Paul. Other places, the pro-war vote will be diluted among all the pro-war guys and Paul can come out on top, just as the guys on Lewrockwell.com have been saying for so long.

[Diana]

Re: What Happened in Natrona?

I think you guys down there were kind of disorganized, would you agree, Diana? I think it may have been lack of a leader who stepped up. No offense to you, Diana, if you are the leader. OK, I just checked and you are not. Phew! The meetup website http://ronpaul.meetup.com/cities/us/wy/casper/ shows there's 2 meetup groups in Casper -- one some guy in Virginia is the organizer, which is less than ideal (still, thanks guy in Virginia! We appreciate the effort; just needed to find an asst organizer who actually lives in Casper, which didn't happen) and then the other one is organized by Lance, who I know (he's a Free State Wyoming (http://freestatewyoming.org) guy, by the way) and who actually does live in Casper and is a good guy. But on the website it looks like he got started even later than I did! Anyway, I know a bunch of Casper guys who *should* be helping you out: Dave from the LP, Richard, PatriotAR15, etc.

That's one lesson from this: you really need a leader, a jump starter, and preferably as many leaders as possible. My county possibly (probably) wouldn't have done squat if it hadn't been for one heroic young man who drove by my house one day, saw my Ron Paul bumper sticker, stopped, and knocked on my door. That's it. He made it happen. We talked, he called and e-mailed a bunch of people and set up a meeting at a restaurant, we had a great turnout of maybe 15 people (this included some folks from out of county) and things went from there.

Then he left town, and the replacement leader he appointed kind of dropped the ball (didn't do anything) and finally decided he didn't want to do it. Meanwhile we lost a couple months. He did show up to the caucus today, though, so all is forgiven :D! So then I took over and the first couple events, almost no one showed up (me and one other guy). I finally figured out that here in Wyoming I needed to actually call the people on the phone and not rely on the meetup web site. Lo and behold, things started coming together.

Anyway, hopefully this narrative will serve to help some of y'all learn from our mistakes and do it better where you're at. If you are not yet the step-up-er in your area, then get with it and become the step-up-er!

Oh, and no, you can't have our yard signs. As far as I'm concerned , it's Ron Paul Revolution Forever. We never stop fighting, we never stop spreading the freedom message, and no mere election results can stop us. I think I'll leave my signs up. I like the idea of RP signs still everywhere in 2009. It'll confuse the enemy :).

Yes, we were disorganized and there was a lack of communication. Way back in October I was trying to spread the word about becoming precinct committee people. When I started posting messages about it to the meetup group I got an email from Jeff Greenspan telling me that I was "duplicating efforts" and to call him. I tried. Repeatedly. I tried emailing too. No response.

I had gathered everything that I posted over in the WY section on this site, about precincts and who to contact to become a PC, and was told it was all duplicate efforts. It wasn't. Not even close. I sent a message to everyone in my meetup group, and I sent messages to the leaders of several other meetup groups in the state. One person responded, but didn't as far as I know actually follow through.

It wasn't until after the December caucus here in Casper that I saw how we were doing here and that we really needed to act to make a difference in the other counties. Ron Paul graphs supplied the names of donors, grassroots folks on the forum looked up their numbers and called these folks in other counties, and Carl Bruning stepped in and pulled through to get the word out through the official campaign. I think we may have made some difference there.

So, that's what happened in Natrona County. I was under the false impression that my efforts were not needed and that everything was under control. Until the December caucuses rolled around and I saw that wasn't the case.

The straw poll at the convention today had Mitt leading everyone else by a far margin. Huck got 18 votes, Hunter 14, and Paul 13. I don't remember McCain's or Thompson's numbers, and I don't think Giuliani got any.

I'll join the meetup Lance organized, that should do us better. I think the moral of the story is to not assume that anyone is doing anything else. And if there isn't organization, to organize things yourself. Rather than looking for or waiting for a leader, become that leader yourself and make things happen. I realized too late here that things weren't organized, I assumed they were and that I was just out of the loop.

[IndieRocker79]

Great post, wonderful info, and it continues to show that we are going to meet all sorts of resistance every step of the way.

Think of it like this though, if McCain wins New Hampshire, then there are three "frontrunners" in the party going into Super Tuesday. The division can only help Dr. Paul, it prevents the mainstream party from gathering behind one man and ganging up against us. The longer it stays divided, the longer Dr. Paul is in the race, and the longer he's a viable candidate, the more support he will gain.

The fact we got nearly 50% of the vote in multiple counties in a state like Wyoming, which is staunchly party-line Republicans is a GREAT sign of things to come.

rEVOLution!

[Jeremiah]

Please re-post this inspiring message with a new title in Grassroots Central. It needs to be seen by all.

YES!

[phoenixrising]

A for effort....& we ALL can learn from the process!! each caucus state is going to be different folks...ya gotta investigate...as many states are different!! no *1* rule of thumb :)

[makrothymia]

Thank you! I needed that. I believe that is going to be this candidates hurdle.

I'm a registered Democrat, so I didn't know there were deadlines, and required party affiliations. So, you can expect the NY turnout numbers skewed, but I'll be there for the general election!

[ButchHowdy]

I'll do what I can do at my age. Next time it snows, I'm writing his name again (not in yellow), and I'm going to buy some slim jims and spread them around. I'll probably buy another shirt to wear as well. Also, I signed up for 5 addresses in Florida.

I'm hoping I can help get North Dakota wrapped up, it's only about 600,000 people. I've got my parents and my global studies teacher already!!

Prairie Grassroots!! Kewl!!

[brandon]

bumping a cool story

[BuddyRey]

Our presence in Wyoming has only grown over the last three years. Wait 'til they get a load of Ron Paul now!