Hi Johnathan, I am glad you came on to answer some of the questions we the grassroots have had but never really seemed to get answers from the HQ. I want to thank you for all of your hard work. My question to you is probably one you have heard a thousand times over but I will ask again anyway. I realize that campaigning costs and that it costs alot of money. After the Nov 5th money-bomb success and again after the Boston Tea Party money-bombs success the campaign had ALOT more cash on hand than most of the other candidates including McCain and Huckabee by a wide margin. The media although never really friendly, after Nov 5th there seemed to be some real positives coming from the campaign media wise. We in MI had our primary on Jan 15th and McCain, Huckabee, and Romney were buzzing around this state speaking in small towns, large towns, putting on t.v. ads. Us Ron Paul supporters were getting our GOP people here going "is Ron coming to Grand Rapids? We would welcome a visit. We would be like were sure he will be here but no word from the HQ. Time past and it was is he coming? Well we do not know. Then to state directors and HQ people saying Ron will come if he sees you have enough organization and support. We did it and showed them we did. Then came the word like a week or so away from Jan 15th that nope he is not coming, leaving us with egg on our face in front of our local GOP who after his fundraising success started to actually give him a second look because at every GOP meeting we had we would double the number of Ron Paul supporters there, far surpasing any supporters from any other campaign. No Ron, No t.v. ads, little radio ads and 25 million sitting in the bank. This was not just isolated to MI as I heard this coming from several primary states. We also never recieved a campaign HQ in West Michigan although we were told to go look at them from which we could be successful precinct delegates. We did recieve much needed supplies about one week before primary day leaving us too little time to distribute it all out. Now mind you we had no money for a local HQ in Grand Rapids, but the night of the primary we had the money to hold a big party at some upscale hotel. There were alot of grassroots people that were just in shock at the way were being treated by the HQ. PLEASE, PLEASE, TELL ME what the hell we spent all that money on. Bacause watching McAIN AND ROMNEY AND hUCKABEE DO A FANTASTC JOB CAMPAIGNING HERE REALLY BLEW THE WIND OUT OF OUR SAILS.
Wow, are you what they call a "troll" in these parts?
Haha, just kidding. I'll be happy to answer your questions as best I can.
First, let me dispel one myth... we never had $25 million in the bank. In fact, I don't think the campaign ever had $15 million in the bank. You see, unlike candidates like McCain, who should have been long-eliminated were it not for a love affair from the media, Dr. Paul had no name recognition. That meant we had to spend as much as we possibly could, getting Dr. Paul's name out in the public sphere. In essence, we had to create our own media, because we weren't getting much in the way of earned media.
Now, as far as the money bombs were concerned, it's true that we got a good deal of positive press from them. But those events by themselves were not sufficient to generate the amount of press that we needed.So with resources limited more than many people in the grassroots understood, we needed to target the money that we were spending. The decision was, as you all know, largely made to focus on the early primary states, because doing well in those states was the only way to dispel the "can he translate his online support into boots on the ground" line.
I think I've mentioned this on a couple of occasions, and I know some people have jumped on me, but the wait that we had to go through leading up to the second money bomb did make things somewhat difficult for the campaign to accomplish that goal. The e-mail that was sent out asking for more money before December 16th was sent because we had to go down from TV in Iowa. Dr. Paul had been at 1% (or lower) in Iowa, prior to us being on TV, and we were seeing our poll numbers rally 5-7% during the two week period we were running ads. But then we had to go down on TV for close to a month, because at that time, we could not afford to spend on TV in Iowa in addition to direct mail, radio, TV, phone banking, staff, etc. in other states like New Hampshire, South Carolina, etc.
So long story short on that point, people need to realize that at no point did we really have as much money as we needed to run a full-fledged campaign everywhere in the country, as much as we all wanted to. Some people were inevitably going to be disappointed.
As far as the "how the money was spent" question, I don't really have the knowledge to document every line-item expense, nor do I think that it's appropriate. Your best bet to answer that question is to look in the FEC reports... you'll probably figure out more by doing that than I'd be able to tell you.
With regards to Michigan specifically, I think your "snubbing" came from a couple of factors. First, your state was winner-take-all, and with Romney's background in the state, it was a contest where our chances were not as good as, say, New Hampshire. Second, remember that Dr. Paul was a sitting congressman, and he took his job seriously. I certainly wish he would have run "full-time," but the fact is that he valued very highly not missing any important votes. That constraint left the campaign with far less time with Ron that any of us would have liked, and so again, some people were bound to be disappointed. We had to focus Ron's time in some areas at the expense of others. So when you talk about the campaigning done by other candidates, keep in mind that they did not see themselves as being constrained in this way.
