Jesse,
I'm a US citizen who's lived in Australia for eight years but who
still spends an inordinate amount of time following US politics, and
cheering for Ron Paul in particular. I'd like to suggest an idea
about how Ron Paul could boost his showing in Florida's huge
Presidency 5 straw poll in September.
First, the campaign can build its own list of delegates and alternate
delegates long before the RPOF releases the list to the campaigns, as
apparently they are supposed to do (but which I have a hard time
trusting them to do without leaking it to certain campaigns first).
The Presidency 5 rules state that delegate names should be announced
as their cards are drawn at county caucus lotteries. Thus if Ron Paul
supporters recorded the drawings on hand-held audio recording devices
and wrote down the names on paper, the delegates could be identified
using the FL voter database, yielding their contact details. (I
actually have the FL voter database and would be happy to match the
names with voters myself.)
As delegates are identified throughout the summer caucuses, you could
mail Ron Paul DVDs and literature to them. This is obvious, and I'd
imagine that all the candidates (including Romney who claims he isn't
competing in the straw poll, which of course is nonsense) will do
this. What I bet no other campaign would do, however, is have their
candidate take the time to make personal phone calls to the delegates.
Maybe I'm too biased, but I think Ron Paul could win over a huge
percentage of any Republicans he talks to one-on-one by phone. Ron
Paul's unrivaled sincerity and fearlessness about discussing issues
would surely have a huge impact. The delegates have likely all heard
about Mitt Romney's snub of Florida Republicans by saying he won't
participate in their straw poll, and a friendly gesture like this
would present a stark contrast.
Of course, ~2,600 delegates selected by lottery, plus a few hundred
alternate delegates, is far too many people for an extremely busy Ron
Paul to call. But perhaps there is a way to narrow the job down
significantly, e.g., by running a robopoll among the delegates and
identifying those whose second choice would be Ron Paul. That might
cut the list down to just a few hundred, which could be doable for Ron
Paul over the course of three months. Another possibility might be to
give a voicemail number to all delegates, allowing Ron Paul to call
back those who want to talk. This could be tested on subset of
delegates to see it's manageable. However it's done, I bet Ron Paul
could win over a significant number of anyone he talks to himself, as
proven by his electoral successes early in his career.
The first caucus is a huge one--Broward County, June 18.
