The young tecchies brought the laptop and YouTube videos. Dumitru Petrescu (pictured), an engineer who fled communist Romania, brought old world wisdom and this silver coin. It reads, “Vote For Truth.”
Etched on one side of the coin is a bust of Ron Paul, the maverick Texan congressman whose presidential bid drew an eclectic crew of libertarian-minded Nutmeggers to a district office Thursday night.
They emerged from the solitude of their blog-buzzing home computers to meet each other, this year’s version of the netroots launching a largely unknown candidate into the spotlight of a major political primary. Last year it was supporters of liberal Democrat Ned Lamont’s U.S. Senate run in Connecticut. This year it’s libertarian Paul’s bid for the Republican presidential nomination.
The Ron Paul for President unofficial CT headquarters on Whitney Avenue in downtown Hamden, decked out with red tinsel and campaign signs, was abuzz with cheer Thursday, as supporters sipped Dunkin’ Donuts coffee and rode out the high of an historic weekend. Last Sunday, supporters broke a one-day fundraising record by raising over $6 million for the candidate. They topped a record held by John Kerry, who collected $5.7 million on one day in 2004.
Paulites’ impressive “money bombs” — the first was in November, when supporters raised more than $4.3 million — have finally pushed the low-polling candidate onto the radar of national media. On the web, the congressman is already well-known as the most-Googled candidate, as well as the most viewed on YouTube.
Most of the 15 or so supporters who came to headquarters for an all-state planning session Thursday had stumbled across the anti-war, tiny-government Republican on the Internet.
“Come Out From Behind Your Computers”
Mike Johnson (pictured), a realtor from Seymour, has been tracking Paul’s web moves for over a year now. Like many in the room, this is his first time getting involved in a political campaign. He’s not the typical hand-shaking, door-knocking type.
“I’m a pretty shy guy normally,” admitted Johnson.
“Really shy!” whispered his friend, Melissa Lavine (pictured at right).
“But Ron Paul has inspired me,” said Johnson, “to come out of my shell.”
That’s just what organizer Bryan Tracy was hoping for. An electrical engineer from Middletown, he told a story of how a frustrated professor once told his class “someday, you’ll have to come out from behind your computers and do something.”
“The people who visit YouTube — I think we’ve got it covered.” What the campaign needs to focus on is the non-WWW world, the “elderly and the soccer moms,” he told the room. “Please, come out from behind your computers!”
The group, like other Ron Paul groups across the country, communicates through the social networking site Meetup.com. Thursday was the first time many of the members were meeting each other in person.
Jon Searles (pictured), from East Hartford, mingled with Meetup buddies in flesh form before a campaign planning meeting. Searles, who fixes cash registers for small grocery stores for a living, has his eye on the nation’s wallet.
“I grew up in the most fiscally irresponsible household imaginable,” said Searles, asked to explain his libertarian leanings. Paul’s fiscal conservatism— he would eliminate the CIA, Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, the Federal Reserve, the Department of Education, the Internal Revenue Service, and the Iraq war, to name a few— appeals to the 25-year-old.
Petrescu (pictured at the top of this story) had his mind on money, too. Like Paul, he believes the U.S. should return to the gold standard, where U.S. currency is directly tied to the amount of gold and silver in the U.S. Treasury. He pulled out his silver “liberty” coin to show how it should be done.
Petrescu, who supported Ross Perot in 1996, shared campaigning tips with the younger, greener supporters in the room. He comes to Paul as a government skeptic seeking “truth” and personal liberties allowed by the Constitution.
After fleeing communist Romania in 1981, Petrescu came to America only to find what he sees as a loss of those liberties. “I know what communism is, and I see America going that way,” said the engineer. “Now with Homeland Security, everyone is a potential terrorist.”
Petrescu said he knows what it’s like when the government “lies” and says there’s ample food, when people in line for rations discover otherwise. He casts aside mainstream TV as “lies, lies lies,” and finds his information in books and Web sites like WhatReallyHappened.com and Rense.com.
He set down his cup of coffee, slipped his coins back into a leather pouch, and joined the Ron Paul Revolution going on in the other room.
White supremacists and Neo-Nazis are strong supporters of Ron Paul and contribute to his campaign. The campaign knows about it and do not disavow their support. Read it here:
<a href="http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/11/the_ron_paul_campaign_and_its.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/11/the_ron_paul_campaign_and_its.html</a>
Recently, the campaign announced it would keep the $500 contribution noted in the article.
What does the New Haven office of the campaign have to say about this?