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Thread: WSJ: Long Shot Ron Paul Finds A Hotbed of Support in Alaska

  1. #1

    WSJ: Long Shot Ron Paul Finds A Hotbed of Support in Alaska

    http://online.wsj.com/public/article...f_main_tff_top

    Long Shot Ron Paul Finds
    A Hotbed of Support in Alaska
    By VAUHINI VARA
    February 4, 2008; Page A11

    FAIRBANKS, Alaska -- With Super Tuesday looming, many presidential candidates are battling over delegate-rich states like California and New York. Ron Paul is making it big in Alaska.

    "I think Ron Paul is awesome," says Schaeffer Cox, a 23-year-old who leads an unofficial group supporting the Republican presidential candidate here. "He's not the most dynamic, rock-star kind of guy -- but he's got ideas."

    The libertarian-leaning candidate's vows to slash federal spending and pull out of Iraq have attracted Mr. Paul a fervent following. While other long-shot candidates have dropped out of the race, Mr. Paul has been able to keep at it and hope for a surprise win because he has raised huge sums of money, largely from individual contributors over the Web.

    Some of his more radical ideas, like abolishing taxes and letting people carry firearms in national parks, have kept him from rising above fringe status in most states. In Alaska, where residents don't pay state income tax and often own guns for hunting and protection, his message has a more concentrated appeal.

    Within weeks of his announcement in March that he would run for the presidential nomination, Mr. Paul's supporters in Alaska began informally campaigning. They clustered on cold, dark afternoons to wave Ron Paul signs at intersections. When Fox News left Mr. Paul out of a televised forum in New Hampshire with the other Republican candidates last month, they stood in front of a Fox News affiliate in Anchorage to protest.

    Mr. Paul's national campaign is now trying to harness the local support. A few weeks ago, Craig Bergman, a consultant for Mr. Paul's campaign, phoned volunteers across the country to find pockets of local enthusiasm that he could tap. He was impressed with the "natural support" for Mr. Paul here -- so just more than a week ago, he opened offices in Anchorage and Fairbanks. Mr. Paul now has eight full-time staffers in the state, more than he had in Michigan, Florida or South Carolina. Friday, Mr. Paul hosted a live phone call with Alaskan voters.

    In this year's highly competitive race, amid a compressed slate of primaries and caucuses, presidential candidates are increasingly campaigning in out-of-the-way places.

    Democratic Sen. Barack Obama, who has been campaigning aggressively in often-ignored locales, has rented space in the Democratic Party headquarters in Anchorage, says Patti Higgins, the party's state chair.

    Republican Mitt Romney has appointed a small steering committee in Alaska. His son Josh has campaigned in the state for him, and Alaska Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski has endorsed him.

    Mr. Paul needs all the help he can get. The Texas congressman -- who placed third for president in 1988 when he ran as a libertarian -- scored a third-place finish in Maine this weekend and a second-place finish in Nevada, with 19% and 14% of the vote, respectively, but has picked up few delegates. Alaska gives him a shot at getting a few more.

    While there have been no official polls in Alaska, local pollsters and officials say Mr. Paul could garner at least 10% -- and possibly upward of 20% -- of the vote. That compares with 4% to 6% of the national vote, according to polls of Republicans.

    "Alaska is a very, very limited-government state -- they aren't even embarrassed to use the word 'libertarian' up there," Mr. Paul, 72 years old, said in an interview.

    In Alaska, the caucus is in large part a numbers game. Many of the state's 683,000 residents live in hard-to-reach spots outside of the road system. Randy Ruedrich, head of the Republican Party in Alaska and a former libertarian, expects just 5,000 to 7,000 to turn out at the Republican caucuses.

    Mr. Paul's campaign goal is aggressive: With 40 districts in Alaska, he wants to persuade 200 people in each district -- 8,000 people total -- to vote for him. Mr. Paul's staffer Mr. Bergman is pushing a tried-and-true approach: Cold-call registered voters to identify supporters and encourage them to vote.

    Getting a group of individualists to stick to the same approach is tough. At Mr. Paul's Anchorage campaign office last week, staffer Kerri Price held a conference call to ask local volunteers what they had done so far to campaign.

    "I've been out on street corners and whatnot holding signs," said Aaron Morse, a volunteer in Anchorage.

    "Does anyone have any lists of supporters, or has anyone been out canvassing, or do we have any precinct captains?" Ms. Price asked.

    "Nope," Mr. Morse said.
    Last edited by Bradley in DC; 02-04-2008 at 10:19 AM.
    My review of the For Liberty documentary:
    digg.com/d315eji
    (please Digg and post comments on the HuffPost site)

    "This political train-wreck Republicans face can largely be traced to Bush’s philosophical metamorphosis from a traditional, non-interventionist conservative to the neoconservatives’ exemplar of a 'War President', and his positioning of the Republicans as the 'War Party'."

    Nicholas Sanchez on Bush's legacy, September 30, 2007.



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  3. #2
    So if Ron Paul loses this election we should all move to Alaska eh

  4. #3

  5. #4
    Quote Originally Posted by WilliamC View Post
    So if Ron Paul loses this election we should all move to Alaska eh
    I'm up for it.

  6. #5
    Quote Originally Posted by WilliamC View Post
    So if Ron Paul loses this election we should all move to Alaska eh
    I've always said if things get too out of hand I'm moving to Alaska and arming myself to the teeth.

  7. #6
    Alaska will be the last bastion when the "NAFTA Supa-highway" comes steamrolling through the lower 48 and Canada.
    "I'm thinkin' we'll rise again"


  8. #7
    Well Alaska is the last American frontier....

    Cold though for a Southerner like myself.

  9. #8
    Quote Originally Posted by WilliamC View Post
    So if Ron Paul loses this election we should all move to Alaska eh
    I will personally welcome every one of...well...as many of you as I can.
    There's plenty of room for you all. We have almost one square mile of land per person in Alaska. We have oil, fish, game, trees, gold and clean water. You are all welcome. Maybe we can make a new nation for ourselves.
    “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”
    -Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi



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  11. #9
    Funny thing....Alaska is the state that receives the most pork-barrel spending dollars per capita according to cagw.org. It's where the "Bridge to Nowhere" is located. Their senator Ted Stevens is one of the biggest pigs.

    http://www.cagw.org/site/PageServer?...rofile_Stevens

    And now Alaska wants the most fiscally responsible candidate to become president.

  12. #10
    Quote Originally Posted by qh4dotcom View Post
    Funny thing....Alaska is the state that receives the most pork-barrel spending dollars per capita according to cagw.org. It's where the "Bridge to Nowhere" is located. Their senator Ted Stevens is one of the biggest pigs.

    http://www.cagw.org/site/PageServer?...rofile_Stevens

    And now Alaska wants the most fiscally responsible candidate to become president.
    Don't think that the people and the politicians are always on the same page.

  13. #11
    If the Alaskans don't want a pig to be their senator....why do they keep re-electing Ted Stevens then? He's been their senator for a long time. He probably brings more taxpayer dollars back to Alaska than Alaskans send to the IRS. All the pork he spends creates jobs. The Alaskans even named the Anchorage airport after him.



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