WHATEVER HAPPENED TO ... RON PAUL SUPPORTERS : Paul supporters stay in political process
Posted on Monday, January 5, 2009
Photograph submitted Shown is Michelle Blaty, who supported Ron Paul at a 2008 straw poll in Benton County and later went on to win the District 10 seat on the Benton County Quorum Court.
The start of that long presidential-election process can seem to have taken place long ago, yet perhaps the first public event of the just past election year, at least in Benton County, was less than a year ago. On Jan. 22, 2008, many supporters of presidential candidate Ron Paul poured into the Public Services Building on Arkansas Highway 102.
Attending the meeting to vote in a straw poll being conducted by the Benton County Republican Committee, they were intent on making their campaign's presence felt in the GOP presidentialnomination race.
They did. Paul took 52 of 142 votes; Mitt Romney, 35; former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, the only home-stater in the race, 30; John Mc-Cain, 20; and Rudy Giuliani, 4. Candidate Fred Thompson, who had dropped out of the race earlier that day, got one vote.
Cheers of Paul supporters went up as the vote was announced.
Benton County GOP Chairman George Spence said the poll had been held as an exercise in building up the Republican Party and added that he hoped Paul supporters who were new to the committee, and others who voted, would all remain active in the party in the future.
Some supporters of Huckabee were quick to suggest that the straw-poll result was unlikely to be reflected in the upcoming state primary, that Huckabee remained the most popular of the candidates among Arkansas Republicans.
Some Huckabee backers attributed Huckabee's third-place showing to dissatisfaction with the former Arkansas governor among some area Republicans, who criticized Huckabee's Republican Party-building efforts when he was governor, from 1996 to 2007.
Jay Barth, a political science professor at Hendrix College in Conway, was not present at the straw vote but commented about it soon after the meeting. Criticism of Huckabee's partybuilding efforts was widely held, especially in northwest Arkansas. But that's not the only lesson to be drawn from Paul's straw-poll win, which had not surprised him, Barth said.
"(Paul) has incredibly fervent support," the professor said.
Indeed, a Paul supporter had, on the night of the vote, already dismissed Huckabee-centered analysis of the outcome. The other candidates' supporters had just as much time to find people to come out to the meeting as the Paul supporters did, said Joel Jones of Bella Vista.
"Either they don't have the support, or they're not as passionate," he said.
Of course, we now know more of the story of the 2008 election than the straw-poll participants did in January 2008: Huckabee went on to win the Feb. 5 primary election in Arkansas with 60 percent of the vote. And McCain's fourthplace finish in the straw poll did not prevent him from running second in the Feb. 5 state primary, garnering 20 percent of the vote, then going on to win the Republican presidential nomination.
Still, given their enthusiasm and organizing ability, and their political success, one has to wonder how Paul supporters at the meeting that night are adjusting to the post-2008 political landscape, what they are doing now and what they might do in the future. That is, one has to wonder whatever happened to the intense, eager, fervent Paul supporters.
Jones could not be reached for comment for this story.
But two other Paul supporters who were also at the Jan. 22 straw-poll meeting - Michelle Blaty, of Bella Vista, and Ricky Hanna, who now lives in Lonoke but lived in Fayetteville during Ron Paul's presidential campaign - both expect to remain active in the political process in the future.
Blaty is the new Benton County Quorum Court justice of the peace for District 10. She decided to run for the court, the county's top legislative body, a couple of years before she backed Paul, Blaty said.
Accountability of government had been one of her chief concerns as a JP candidate, along with keeping taxes as low as possible and spending public money wisely, Blaty said during the campaign.
"I just want to make sure that county government is always accountable to the people, and I want to serve in the best interest of the people. I'm not saying the Quorum Court has ever done anything to not do that. My big thing is, I just want (county government) to be accountable. ... I definitely want to keep taxes low and to really look, if taxes do need to be raised, if maybe things could be cut instead of raising taxes," she said then.
She enjoyed carrying Paul's banner, mostly in her own neighborhood, on behalf of a new direction in politics, Blaty said.
"I think (Paul's message was vindicated). You notice him being interviewed a lot more on CNBC now than he was ever allowed to during the campaign," she said.
Blaty blamed Paul's defeat on lack of campaign funds, but said even there, Paul had some early successes that deserve respect.
"Unfortunately, it seems that winning elections is purely based on how much money you can raise. ... I think there were a couple of days that they hit over $1 million in one day. And from what everyone is saying - 'there's such little support' - I mean, there was a big grass-roots movement going. And not everyone had the same political ideologies. Some people preferred his stance on the war. Some people preferred his stance on economics. Economics was a really big thing for me," she said.
She doesn't expect Paul to run again and, interestingly, said she'd consider all candidates carefully before supporting a future presidential candidate.
Hanna, who now lives in Lonoke but lived in Fayetteville during Ron Paul's presidential campaign, was interviewed less than two hours after his wife had a baby.
Still, he felt strongly enough about the Paul effort and the political process that he readily agreed to talk about both. He definitely plans to stay active in politics in the future, he said.
"Ron Paul has a new Campaign for Liberty Web site. He set up his own kind of, oh, organization, I guess you'd call it, called the Campaign for Liberty, once he suspended his campaign (for president). And that organization is still very active and engaged in what's going on. Basically, (they're doing) the same thing that Ron Paul was doing and had been doing for years - bringing up the issues of what's constitutional and what's not, which powers the politicians actually have delegated to them. A good example would be the bank bailouts and the auto bailouts - Campaign for Liberty sends out information about those, and contacting your senators and things like that," Hanna said.
He views his and others' ongoing efforts in the political process as a continuation of the campaign, even if, as far as he's concerned, it won't necessarily be focused on Paul anymore, Hanna said. "Just focused on liberty," he said.
Hanna tried to be a Paul delegate and did many other campaign jobs for the Paul campaign in northwest Arkansas.
"I went to the meet-up group. ... I had signage up. I had a big 4-by-8 sign in my yard with lights around it. And I had posters printed out on both sides of my truck and my wife's car. I had bumper stickers. ... I did a lot of handing out ... little cards, a little larger than bookmarks. Each one had a different topic of interest that Ron Paul was campaigning on, like tax reform, the military and getting out of the war - and things like that. We'd go hand those out. And I went to the opening of the campaign headquarters in Bentonville and, just day to day, just talked to people and shared with them how to get more information about this guy that they'd heard of on TV," Hanna said.
FEEDBACK:
Something to say about this topic? Submit a Letter to the Editor online
