Paul proving to be a force in 2012 GOP contest

In this Sept. 5, 2011 file photo, Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, speaks at the Amer­i­can Prin­ci­ples Project Pal­metto Free­dom Forum in Colum­bia, S.C. (Asso­ci­ated Press | Mary Ann Chastain)

CHRISTOPHER SHERMAN

STEVE PEOPLES

Asso­ci­ated Press

McALLEN, Texas — Ron Paul, antag­o­nist of the Fed­eral Reserve and advo­cate for the gold stan­dard, prob­a­bly won’t cap­ture the Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial nom­i­na­tion. But with his lib­er­tar­ian lean­ings ener­giz­ing a small though grow­ing group of pas­sion­ate con­ser­v­a­tives, the quirky Texas con­gress­man is prov­ing to be a force in the 2012 contest.

Four months before the ini­tial vot­ing, Paul is hav­ing such a big impact on the race that some Repub­li­can oper­a­tives are con­vinced that he will play spoiler in impor­tant states, siphon­ing votes and atten­tion from his rivals for months to come and help­ing deter­mine the nominee.

He’s empow­ered by uncon­ven­tional but suc­cess­ful fundrais­ing tech­niques, a more sophis­ti­cated cam­paign than his two pre­vi­ous attempts at the pres­i­dency, and a fiery mes­sage he’s preached for decades but only now is res­onat­ing with Amer­i­cans con­cerned about the nation’s debt.

In short, he could prove dan­ger­ous for the early front-runners, Texas Gov. Rick Perry and for­mer Mass­a­chu­setts Gov. Mitt Romney.

“I have no idea what exactly spoiler means,” Paul said recently while in New Hamp­shire. “If you’re a par­tic­i­pant and you have an influ­ence and you win or come close and you influ­ence the debate, I think that’s pretty impor­tant. So I don’t put a neg­a­tive term on that as spoil­ing any­thing. Spoil­ing their fun? Maybe they need a lit­tle spoiling.”

It’s unclear which rival the 76-year-old Texan stands to hurt the most.

Paul’s most devoted fol­low­ers have been com­mit­ted to him for years. But the “con­verts,” as the con­gress­man calls them, seem to be grow­ing with lit­tle regard for whether their sup­port of Paul unin­ten­tion­ally helps another candidate.

Kate Baker is among the many die-hard Paul sup­port­ers in New Hamp­shire who shrug off the sug­ges­tion that their can­di­date may play spoiler. She holds out hope of victory.

“Ron Paul is doing well enough he has the pos­si­bil­ity to win, par­tic­u­larly in key states. This time I can taste suc­cess,” said Baker, the vol­un­teer head of New Hampshire’s Women for Ron Paul Coali­tion. She also worked to help Paul get elected four years ago.

But for Baker and oth­ers, win­ning almost sounds less impor­tant than spread­ing Paul’s mes­sage of fis­cal dis­ci­pline and smaller gov­ern­ment. That’s a pitch he’s made for years and one that oth­ers sud­denly have adopted, some­times with more success.

“Look at how much the mes­sage is trav­el­ing right now. He’s hon­est and con­sis­tent. That’s the kind of per­son I can put my money and effort behind,” said Baker, a 37-year-old Man­ches­ter res­i­dent. “I vote for Ron Paul on principle.”

Oth­ers like her have helped Paul build a grass-roots fundrais­ing net­work so robust that his team is prepar­ing for a pri­mary cam­paign that goes the dis­tance, con­fi­dent Paul will raise enough money to stay in the race as long as he wants.

His fundrais­ing prowess dropped jaws four years ago when, dur­ing one cash-grab blitz, he raised more than $5 mil­lion in 24 hours. Draw­ing on thou­sands of small online dona­tions, Paul has raised at least $1 mil­lion in five indi­vid­ual “money bombs” this year, accord­ing to his campaign.

Over­all, he raised $4.5 mil­lion this year through June 30 and is expected to report $5 mil­lion more through the end of Sep­tem­ber. That’s well behind Rom­ney and prob­a­bly Perry, too. But it’s far more than most of the second-tier candidates.

It’s not just money that’s helped him become a more cred­i­ble can­di­date this time around. It’s also the improved qual­ity of his campaign.

Paul moved more quickly this year to put orga­niz­ers and expe­ri­enced work­ers in impor­tant states. He was the first can­di­date to run tele­vi­sion ads in New Hamp­shire. At the straw poll in Ames, Iowa, a test of cam­paign orga­ni­za­tion, Paul fin­ished sec­ond to Min­nesota Rep. Michele Bach­mann by only 152 votes.

“The fact that we have so many county chair­men and precinct chair­men and all this all through Iowa, we never had that before,” Paul said recently from his office in Washington.

There are signs that Paul is adopt­ing more tra­di­tional, and pos­si­bly suc­cess­ful, cam­paign strate­gies, accord­ing to Eric Wool­son, who man­aged for­mer Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee’s vic­tory in the 2008 Iowa cau­cuses. The strong straw poll fin­ish was “maybe a lit­tle more of an acknowl­edge­ment that this is the way the game is played,” he said.

In New Hamp­shire, the dif­fer­ence goes beyond organization.

Paul still talks freely about some sub­jects that place him on the fringe, such as end­ing the fight against drugs. But his early ads in the state seemed to “recast” his image, said Richard Kil­lion, an unaf­fil­i­ated Repub­li­can strate­gist who had advised for­mer Min­nesota Gov. Tim Paw­lenty, a 2012 race dropout, in New Hampshire.

The ads give the impres­sion that Paul is the most elec­table and best posi­tioned to beat Obama, going against the con­ven­tional wis­dom that Paul “speaks out well on big prob­lems in Wash­ing­ton, but may not be the best mes­sen­ger to tackle them,” Kil­lion said.

Paul is work­ing to rem­edy that perception.

“I keep think­ing maybe how I can improve on say­ing things so the peo­ple can under­stand what I’m talk­ing about and make sure that they don’t mis­in­ter­pret me,” he said.

All this sug­gests Paul is poised to improve upon his 2008 per­for­mance, when he grabbed more than 7 per­cent in the New Hamp­shire Repub­li­can pri­mary and reached as high as 14 per­cent in Nevada.

“There’s no doubt in my mind that Ron Paul will get some­where north of 10 per­cent, pos­si­bly even in the high teens, which will have a major effect and impact on the race and who wins — whether its Perry or Rom­ney — in New Hamp­shire,” said Michael Den­nehy, a New Hampshire-based oper­a­tive who led Sen. John McCain’s cam­paign four years ago.

“I would go so far as to say he will play spoiler,” Den­nehy said. “I do not see his sup­port wan­ing below 10 percent.”

Paul also seems more will­ing to mix it up with the other can­di­dates that he was in 2008.

He acknowl­edges try­ing to score polit­i­cal points that raise his pro­file in addi­tion to his stan­dard no-frills dis­cus­sion of the issues.

A Paul tele­vi­sion ad call­ing Perry “Al Gore’s Texas cheer­leader” gar­nered loads of atten­tion and drew attacks from Perry. That was an unusual reac­tion from a front-runner who would typ­i­cally ignore attacks from lesser candidates.

Paul said he wres­tles with how to apply the new style.

But as much as other can­di­dates pull Paul’s ideas into the con­ser­v­a­tive main­stream, it’s easy to for­get he was the Lib­er­tar­ian Party’s can­di­date for pres­i­dent in 1988.

Paul calls for imme­di­ate with­drawal of troops around the world, brushes aside con­cerns about Iran obtain­ing a nuclear bomb and has sug­gested Israel be left to defend itself. He would return to the days when the cur­rency was backed by gold. He would elim­i­nate a host of fed­eral agen­cies and says, “There is no greater threat to the secu­rity and pros­per­ity of the United States today than the out-of-control, secre­tive Fed­eral Reserve.”

Mostly, Paul is pleased that some ideas he’s ham­mered for years are echo­ing all around him.

“Nobody ever did this and now it’s not just me doing this,” he said. “I think that’s all good.”

Posted by AP News on Oct 2 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.