Grass Roots Activists Push for Paul

Jane Aitken knows how hard it is to find out about the latest developments in the Ron Paul campaign.

So, she relies on her computer.

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:00 here we have YouTube....if I might just play a tiny bit of it for you

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:20 I had been a real skeptic...

Aiken, the Hillsborough County Ron Paul chair says she's been collecting Ron Paul videos.

She does it, she says, because people are really hungry for all that is Ron Paul.

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3:30 Ron's people are very well informed, and they want to hear everything he has to say....they want to know what he is doing, what he is saying....

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4:02 b/c the media won't cover it, they want to see it, so now we have our own media. I guess that is what the internet is, our own media.

While the New York Times and the Washington Post may not cover every speech and campaign stop Paul makes, Aitken says a grassroots network tries to make up for it.

27 year olds Kate Rick and Jason Schackai started a website earlier this year.

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10:39 we billed ourselves as unofficial grassroots headquarters. We post things that we find are interesting. We run the meetup calendar so there are sign making parties...you may have seen these banners with tyvek, stencils and spray paint and they are going on up all over....helping the campaign maintain a small structure, but take advantage of hundreds of motivated people.

People like Rick and Schackai are spending hours a week trying to increase Ron Paul's profile.

They both know many people haven't heard of Ron Paul, the Republican who espouses beliefs often associated with Libertarians.

He is frequently described as a second-tier candidate.

During televised debates, he is one of the guys at the end of the stage, who gets far fewer questions directed his way.

But, state campaign director Jared Chicoine says the work of New Hampshire activists is starting to pay off.

8:13 when me, as the campaign coordinator for NH can't keep control of something, I am constantly playing catch-up- to find out who are these new supporters....for instance today, I got a call from the Concord Monitor asking if we had opened a Concord Office b/c there were two large signs in front of a building. I don't know who they are.

The campaign in New Hampshire is small.

Paul only employs two staffers, Chicoine says he would like to add to that.

There aren't offices in the state's largest cities.

Financially speaking though, things are bright.

Paul raised about $640,000 in the first quarter, but raised 2.4 million in the second quarter.

He only trails former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani with the amount of cash on hand.

For the record he has a little more than 2.3 million, while Giuliani and Romney have 22 and 18 million, respectively.

Chicoine, attributes the uptick in fundraising to Paul's message.

15:58 It comes right down to freedom. They want to go back to small government. Not smaller government. Small government as it was originally intended. And that is what really unites most of our support.

The word "freedom" is a short-hand way of explaining Paul's platform.

Paul supports a drastically reduced federal government- the elimination of the IRS, he believes states should be left to regulate abortion and marriage policies.

He questions many international organizations and agreements, such as the World Trade Organization, NAFTA and the country's membership to the United Nations.

Kate Rick describes a so-called non-interventionist military policy in a Paul Administration.

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3:11 pulling back of the military, an end to the war, pulling back military presence all around the world, and the amount of money we are paying to send soliders...where people don't want them there...and there is a whole domestic front.

It's nearly impossible to talk with a Ron Paul supporter in New Hampshire and not hear the word "integrity."

Many people say, even if they don't agree with him on all the issues, they respect him for speaking his mind and his consistency.

His website emphatically states that Paul has never voted to raise taxes, to restrict gun ownership, raise congressional pay or never taken a government paid junket.

It's a quality that Jason Schackai admires.

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7:03 this is a guy who voted against the Patriot Act. This is a guy who voted against the Iraq War from the beginning...and he was in the party that was pushing these things.

Schackai and others are convinced with just a little more exposure Paul is going to emerge as one of the strongest Republican candidates for President.

If that's true, Paul has a big hill to climb- at least if political polls are any measure.

A recent UNH Survey Center poll had Paul at 2%, down a point from the month of June.

And a USA Today/Gallup poll had him at zero.

But Schackai says this far from the primary, that's not the right way to gauge Paul's electability.

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2:53 there is clearly a movement that is much stronger than any of the other campaigns, regardless of who people say they are going to vote for. And that's the real story. And that story is getting ignored.

That story might not be ignored much longer.

Wednesday morning, the Las Vegas Sun published an article titled "Ron Paul emerges as GOP's unlikely rock-star candidate."

For NHPR News, I'm DG.