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Paul campaign fueled by Web cash and savvy
| quote: | Paul campaign fueled by Web cash and savvy
By Fredreka Schouten, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON — For several sweltering days in August, Cheryl Scott and several other Nashville residents stood on downtown overpasses bearing eight-foot-long signs that urged rush-hour drivers to "Google Ron Paul."
Scott's campaign is one measure of the Internet-driven support Paul has sparked in his long-shot bid for the presidency. He has never polled above 4% in national surveys, according to Jeffrey Jones, managing editor of the Gallup Poll. Yet the Republican Texas congressman's supporters helped him collect $5 million over the summer.
While that amount is dwarfed by the more than $10 million Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani each raised in the last three months, Paul's money is significant. It's five times the cash collected by former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, who finished second in Iowa's GOP straw poll, an early sign of organizational strength. Paul also has more money in the bank than Arizona Sen. John McCain, who is third in national polls.
"Ron Paul is no laughing matter. He's tapping into a side of the Republican Party that's never had its issues addressed," said David All, a GOP strategist and Internet expert. "And he's doing it by running a truly Web 2.0 campaign."
Paul's campaign spokesman Jesse Benton said his Internet popularity demonstrates that his message is resonating. Paul is the only GOP candidate who wants to immediately withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq. "These national polls are still about name recognition, and that's an obstacle we have to overcome," Benton said.
A former Libertarian Party candidate for president, Paul is not the only contender this year who has used technology to generate interest and money for the 2008 race.
Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton, for instance, drew more than 500,000 viewers to her website in a single day in June with an online spoof of The Sopranos. Romney this week launched his own social networking tool, dubbed the "Team Mitt Action Center," that allows supporters to raise money online and participate in Web chats with top campaign aides.
Overall, Democrats have collected three times as much cash online as their GOP counterparts during the first six months of the year, according to TechPresident, which tracks candidates' Internet efforts.
Still, Internet experts compare Paul to Democrat Howard Dean, who raised $30 million online for the 2004 presidential primaries. They say Paul has used the Internet to generate interest and mobilize supporters on the ground better than any other Republican candidate in the race.
"He is the heir to the Howard Dean campaign in recognizing that individual donors talking to one another and building websites and blogging can do more for a campaign that any campaign staffer sitting in an office," said Andrew Rasiej, a former Dean adviser and TechPresident co-founder.
Paul tops the GOP field in the number of supporters on the social networking sites, MySpace and Facebook. He also leads all presidential candidates in the number of times his videos have been viewed on YouTube, the popular video-sharing site. As of late Wednesday afternoon, Paul had 4.5 million views, according to TechPresident and TubeMogul.com, which tracks online video traffic. The leading Democrat was Illinois Sen. Barack Obama with 3.6 million views.
Scott, a Nashville dentist, runs one of nearly 1,000 groups dedicated to Paul on Meetup.com, a site that links people who share interests. Her 400-member group helped organize a rally last Saturday in Nashville, which she said drew about 1,600 people to hear Paul speak.
Scott, who has contributed $2,300 to Paul, launched the group last May to help counter a petition drive by Michigan GOP Chairman Saul Anuzis to bar Paul from Republican debates. "He's really one of us," she said. "He doesn't seem like a politician."
Anuzis criticized Paul for saying in a May 15 debate that U.S. policy in the Middle East was a reason for the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Paul continues to participate in the debates, including the one Tuesday in Dearborn, Mich.
For all of his Internet savvy, Paul lags behind Giuliani, Romney, McCain and Fred Thompson in money and in the polls. Even so, Bruce Buchanan, an expert on presidential politics at the University of Texas at Austin, said Paul has achieved an important goal: He's collected the cash he needs to maintain a presence in the contest.
"It's pretty clear to him and to everybody else that he's unlikely to win the presidency, but he now has enough money to hang around to continue to articulate his position and provide a place for the disaffected to go," Buchanan said.
Benton said the congressman is working on his first television ad, which will run in New Hampshire, home to the first 2008 primary. Radio ads also are planned for at least six early voting states.
By comparison, Romney has already spent $8 million on TV advertising — the most of any GOP or Democratic candidate.
"We're lean and efficient. We don't spend money on focus groups or polls to tell us what language to use," Benton said. "He's going to talk about what he wants to talk about."
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