The Road to Liberty

(Apologies for the long gap since my last entry. I’ve been both busy and distracted. I hope this jumbo entry atones a bit!)

If you haven’t yet heard about Ron Paul or the Campaign for Liberty, go do your friggin’ homework already.

Now, here’s (some of) what I just experienced.

After my stint as state coordinator for the Ron Paul 2008 presidential campaign, I was asked by the C4L staff to be the state coordinator for the Rally for the Republic. I accepted. I then… did nothing, pretty much, for a week or two; I was still taking it easy after the district conventions, which were substantively the capstone of the presidential campaign here in Oregon, and thus represented the end of my duties as state coordinator for same, save for a few loose ends. However, I underestimated two things: the degree of excitement around the R4R, and the amount of work it would take to coordinate Oregon’s participation in it. Consequently, things weren’t as smooth as they might have been. Still, we have a lot of good folks here and most of the “big things” were handled properly sooner or later.

I was asked by C4L HQ to choose 7 people to attend the “Leadership Summit” which was to officially establish the Campaign For Liberty as an entity by ratifying a constitution and bylaws for the org. This is something I should have started doing sooner than I eventually did. After lining up our delegation, a concern arose: some of our delegates were also delegates to the Republican National Convention and would potentially have duties at the RNC which could conflict timewise with the Summit. While I initially thought this wouldn’t be a problem due to what I was told about previous years’ RNCs, eventually I became concerned due to so many irregularities and even rule violations which we’d already seen this campaign cycle. So, I took the RNC delegates out and substituted others whom I knew would be in Minneapolis-St. Paul and would also be good choices for the Summit. I then had to make still another change at the last minute, which I won’t go into here.

So then I had to actually get there. This was accomplished thanks to some great people (did I mention we have great people around here?) including one woman who donated the use of her family’s van, one man who donated $750 for gas for the van, another woman who donated some silver coins which were converted into hotel room payments, and just a whole lot of making ourselves “play nice with others” during a somewhat grueling van trip. Why was it grueling? Well, we packed 8 people into a minivan and drove 36 hours straight to get out there, and 34 to get back, and just read on for what happened!

First off, we got partway across Oregon and encountered our first attack: flies. A bunch got into the van and we swatted at them and rolled down windows at (we hoped) just the right moments to suck them back outside. Not to be outdone, an infestation of gnats made its entry after sundown, perhaps drawn by the van’s dome light, or the laptop screens playing “Yes Men” and “Idiocracy” to while away the miles. The screens and the ceiling fabric both suffered from a rash of swats and smears.

At the east side of Oregon we picked up Helen, our 8th vanmate (the other 7 were all from the central Willamette Valley). None of us had met her in person before. Would her luggage fit? Would she fit?? We breathed a collective sigh of relief to find her normal-sized and bringing along a reasonable amount of stuff. She and her family welcomed us with a meal ready to eat at 11PM when we arrived — and a few hundred more of the gnats helped themselves to the entryway light just inside the house, creating a storm of bugs surrounding it the likes of which I hadn’t seen before.

Helen with Ron Paul

After eating, we took off across Idaho. Somewhere along I-84, in the middle of the night, our next attack arrived: a bumper, made of plastic or hard rubber, had placed itself in our way, and we ran right over it with the left-side tires. That woke everyone up! We pulled over to inspect for damage. Finding none, we were about to get under way again when I spotted a semi approaching with sparks flying out from under it! We stared at this strange sight for a few seconds, and then realized that the sparks must be coming from the bumper in the road, now caught under the semi! It went flying by, the driver probably not even aware of the spectacle, and then someone said that it had flown out from under the semi a little ways up the road. I ran ahead a piece to find it, but never saw it again.

So, off we went to I-15 and from there up and over the continental divide to I-90, the day breaking just in time for the mountain view. Sailing through Butte, we headed across the vast reaches of eastern Montana and North Dakota. Somewhere just east of Billings, in a quiet little town, by a store marquee warning locals about a passer of bad checks who’d just come through the area, we encountered our next assailants: a bunch of bees, drawn to every sweet drink or treat we bought from the store or pulled from our supplies. Thankfully nobody was stung. It was very hot, too.

I-90 gave way to I-94, the eastbound side of which is a tortuous thing in a heavy-laden van traveling at high speed, due to wavy patterns in the pavement which bounce the van repeatedly, sometimes coming down only to be thrown right back up again. Sleep was a challenge. It seems I’m hard-wired with some kind of “driver circuit”; any time I awaken in a moving vehicle, if there’s any kind of sudden motion occurring, I startle, panicked that I’ve drifted off behind the wheel and the vehicle is now in the process of crashing. It doesn’t matter that I’m not driving. This led to quite a few jerks of my head.

Along the way, there were some phone calls to straighten out details, but without my computer, I just didn’t feel fully functional. On top of that, I got a robocall from HQ with some “important” info which I couldn’t hear very well and had no way to record. Argh. (I eventually tracked down the info after reaching MN.)

We did stop to see the badlands, somewhere, at a viewpoint/rest area. It was stunning, both for its beauty and its desolation. I couldn’t help imagining an explorer looking at this land prior to any roads there, and the pessimism he’d certainly feel about any chance of traversing such country. Perhaps a skilled outdoorsman might do it on foot, if he could survive on whatever vegetation and wildlife may be out there, but forget about wagons or anything of that sort.

Badlands (Terry Hamel)

On into the night we rode, crossing Minnesota in the dark, and reaching our destination of Medina around 2. Unfortunately, our destination included not one but two preposterously long detours, and we had no GPS, and none of us knew the first thing about the area, and so we became a tad bit lost. By the time we sorted that out on the phone with the hotel night staff, we had lost probably about 45 minutes. Everyone was pretty tired by this point. Still, we had one more obstacle to defeat: sleeping arrangements. We had 2 rooms with 2 beds each. We managed to work something out involving adding 1 cot per room, but I won’t go into details on that. (What happens in Medina, stays in Medina! LOL.)

Alright, a few hours of precious sleep later, it’s finally time to hit the “Real Clear Politics Training” session. We make our way to the building without incident, get checked in, and settle into our places. Our next adversary soon becomes apparent: the building’s air conditioning system. It isn’t working. Ugh! The afternoon gets quite stuffy and warm, but everyone is into the information, and we aren’t deterred.

During this day, I meet a lot of folks in person for the first time. HQ folks, Oregon folks, and others. I love all you guys; don’t make me recite everyone by name here.

Tony from NY with Ron Paul

At the event dinner, I get my “firsts” and look for a place to sit. Spotting none of my people, Tony Matuszak of NY catches my eye, by virtue of being alone at a table. I didn’t know him but I figured it would be a good chance to make a new friend, for both of us. I was right; Tony turns out to be a great guy and we end up bumping into each other numerous times over the next 3 days. His state coordinator didn’t come; perhaps that’s why he was alone. (I didn’t think to ask about that.) Before long, others join us, including several more from our van, plus Matt Colvin, a handsome and engaging young Air Force guy recently moved to IA, who turns out to be the designated singer of the national anthem at the R4R, and a cute and friendly girl named Tasha, also from NY. She wound up sitting between Matt and me. Lucky Tasha? Lucky us? Both? You decide. ;-P

Matt Colvin with Ron Paul

After dinner we finish the training, which goes long; our primary speaker for the day, Mike Rothfeld, had a lot to tell us and not enough time, plus we’re not the sort of folks to sit quietly and not ask any questions… and on top of all that, Ron Paul himself dropped in to give us a short speech.

Then it was time to decide what to do for the evening.

(Author’s note: I took a several-day break at this point, then coninued writing, only to lose a first draft of the next section of this post, representing probably an hour of writing. The things I do for you people… LOL!)

R3VOLutionaries done with training (Terry Hamel)

Many people were milling around outside, some emerging from the training, others from the Ron Paul RNC delegates’ reception next door. Among this mayhem I met Michael Nystrom, founder of the Daily Paul. He informed me confidentially that there was some conspiring in the works over at Club Jager. Oh boy! But there were complications involving multiple plans to visit multiple night spots, multiple hotels, multiple vehicles, not everyone wanting to go out at all, many of us just meeting one another for the first time, etc., and it took some head scratching before we worked out a plan. One of our vanful took one for the team and hopped over the back seat, making room for Jenny Brown, an alternate RP delegate from Oregon. We then drove back to our Medina hotel, dropped off the smart ones so they could get some sleep, and then set off to find Club Jager.

Along the way, Jenny spotted a La Quinta hotel and told us that that was hers. Great; that would make things easy on the way home — or so we thought. If we’d only known… but we didn’t, so we hummed along to downtown Minneapolis, and eventually found the club in what seemed to me to be a questionable part of town. Inside we did indeed find a hotbed of RP support; I again encountered Nystrom, who was drunk. I asked him where the conspiring was taking place; he gestured to the tableful of happy partiers next to us and suggested that there was some conspiring right there. As I contemplated this dubious notion, he was told by someone else that it was time for them to go, and I didn’t get to talk with him any more. I spent the next hour or two chatting with Jenny and a couple of guys from other parts of the country, including one man who said the TTC runs through his yard. I believed him.

Heading back, we spotted the L.Q. from earlier and pulled off the freeway to go there. Since it was hidden from view until too late to make its turnoff, we took the next one; it seemed simple enough to make our way back the 1/4 or 1/2 mile. Nope! We wandered like Exodus Israelites for what seemed like an hour. Jenny called for support but the person she contacted was not very helpful. Eventually we did find out where we were and where her L.Q. was; it wasn’t that one. We had a lot of driving to do. Another 3:30AM outing.

A few short hours of sleep later, we were off to the summit. Most of us in the van were delegates to this event; we left one at the hotel to sleep and took Caitanya with us in hopes that we could find him something to do in the vicinity of the event. Things started with breakfast and a photo opp. with Ron, outside; it was a beautiful morning and I found this to be one of the best parts of the trip for me personally, despite some last-minute stress related to being the state organizer. The reason for the enjoyment was that we were all out there in the sun together with time to sit and talk. I made some new friends and introduced many of them to each other. Mike Maresco, the Ron Paul Rider, was there, and the “cute Ron Paul YouTube twins”, and sooooo many others.

Jamie with Ron Paul

I almost forgot: Matt Labash of the Weakly Standard interviewed us for some time during the morning.

Matt Labash gathering ammo for his article (Terry Hamel)

One funny part related to the fact that I was lamenting the stress problem to someone there on the sidewalk with me, and it pertained to Ron McIntosh, our southern Oregon delegate to the summit, not being up to speed on what the summit was and not having planned to be there after all (I had just found that out that morning, at the breakfast). As I was worrying aloud about this, a pretty redhead a few feet away suddenly turned and said that Ron was her uncle! It was Rachael from Rhode Island! Naturally I enlisted her help with making sure Ron knew what was going on, and we chatted a bit.

Rachael trying to calm Jamie down (Terry Hamel)

I wanted to meet everyone there! I settled for a dozen or so.
The rest of the day went well, with a speech from Ron (Paul), presentations from several of the C4L staff, and Q&A with the attendees, most of whom were — like me — excited at what we were seeing, but a few of whom were disgruntled and insisted on complaining and trying to use the time to make their PoV heard. I actually missed most of those comments, as I was frantically darting in and out trying to do organizer stuff. One thing I was doing was trying to get our individual VIP rally tickets exchanged for a set of consecutive tickets. (I did manage to do that, but didn’t notice where the seats were until later on.)

The session ran long, and didn’t include constitution or bylaws for the org as we’d been told in advance; I’m not certain yet why, but I assume they’ll be forthcoming. Anyway, then we ran back to the hotel to change clothes and then it was off to the “Ron Paul Nation Celebration”.

We arrived late there, but enjoyed the evening greatly. Good music, great people, beautiful warm and windy evening, and I met a few more folks, including Steve Dore. I also met up with Kathy Ornstein here, which was great; hadn’t seen or talked to her since… I don’t know when. Seems like since the Tonight Show back in October! Anyway, I mostly wandered around on my own, which ironically allowed me the few moments of “alone time” I got during the trip — ironic because I was surrounded by several thousand happy RPers. The field wasn’t near full though, so the back part was pretty open and the bleachers in that part of the facility were almost totally empty.

After this, we debated going to Steve Dore’s gig, but we all really needed the rest, so we just went back to the hotel. In the morning it was check-out time, then off to the Target Center for the Rally!

We got there a bit late, and the first person we saw on the corner was… Jenny Brown! She was one of the hundreds along that side of the building who had assembled along the sidewalk to wave RP signs and interact with all the traffic going by — including us. As we passed the end of the block, we handed our extra tickets (not needed since we had gotten VIP tickets at the summit) to Jim Azzola, who was passing them out there. After we parked the van, we made our way back to the sidewalk and joined the hubbub for a while. Bob Barr came along at one point. People were walking up and down selling bumper stickers, buttons, everything RP that was portable and marketable. There were balloons, shirts… it was just a massive RP-fest. Wheeee!

Once inside the building, we were confronted with a huge amount of people waiting in lines which seemed to go both ways in front of us. I couldn’t see exactly where we were supposed to go. At the suggestion of someone, we made our way to the right, down a hall, and up one level, then around a corner to the right again to an entrance labeled “VIP”. There was another long line here. We waited through that, being shook down by John Cunningham and an associate of his for donations to his campaign, then got examined by the security personnel, and then found ourselves in the vendor hall — still outside the actual arena.

At this point, I was suddenly hailed by someone from Oregon, off to one side of the path. I think it was Annette Blair from Dallas, but I could be mistaken. We talked for a few minutes as the rest of my party continued on without me. When I excused myself from that conversation I then tried to find my way into the actual arena, but was having difficulty doing so and had to ask a security fellow for help. (Seriously, it was a mass of confusion in there and I was pretty lost. I also wanted to stop and examine the vendor booths, but simply had no time. I never did make it back there for them, and I regret that.)

Finally arriving at the Mecca point of the arena itself, I found thousands of people (among nearly 20000 seats; it wasn’t filling up yet) listening to an invocation given by a local liberty candidate for Congress. After this I found my seat in the front row (yes!) but also found that the seating numbers were not being entirely respected. The 6 of us with consecutive front row seats did find 6 consecutive seats, but they were off a bit from what was on the tickets. Later on a security/staff person did come and make everyone shuffle around into the correct seats.

In addition to the VIP seats, we also were given non-transferable bracelets which gave us access to the SRO area in front of us around the stage. Sadly, the one person in our group who didn’t get one of these was Terry, who was also the only one who was there to seriously take photos. He did manage to get some good shots from his seat though.

We met a couple of men who had come from the McCain coron….. um, I mean the RNC, as they wormed their way in front of us (relatively politely) looking for a good photo opp, and they were surprised by how cool we were as we chatted with them. One of the two looked like Tiger Woods, and he was persuaded by two women in the second row right behind me to put on a red wig and pose for a photo with it on. LOL! (The women are from the “Red Whig Party”.) I found out that he’s from Florida and went to a very conservative school there where real history is taught. He’s been aware of Ron for years and seemed genuinely enthused about the rally.

Many things happened that day; I got a lot of phone calls, especially later on as things got murky re: the RNC and rumors of Establishment plans to have some kind of vote while the RP delegates were away at the rally. I talked with one man who told me he had 4 different sources telling him that that was going to happen, and he seemed rather perturbed that he wasn’t able to convince C4L staff to act on these reports. He handed me a business card: Steve Shute of Lenexa, KS. www.HopeForAmericaCoalition.org. I don’t know. Ultimately, while I wasn’t able to pay attention to every speech, song, etc., I thoroughly enjoyed the day and night’s events here. By the time Ron came out, the place was full (at least as much as I could see) and we were rocking! If you haven’t seen the speech yet, check it out.

I wasn’t in my front row seat for the speech, though. A funny thing happened on the way to my seat… I had been out in the hallway talking with people, and was making my way back up front to retake my seat, when I noticed the state “flags” (whatever the right word is) popping up among the crowd again (they’d been out earlier but had been collected by the staff due to concerns over visibility problems for the TV cameras). I was rounding the back of the arena floor area and starting up the right side aisle toward where I had spotted the “ORE” flag (I’m pretty sure it was with Ron McIntosh, since I’d spotted him in that location earlier) when an announcement came over the PA that there were some seats in front up for grabs, first come first served. YIPE!!! The scramble began and there was no way for me to get back over there.

I ended up making my way to the front, then using my magic bracelet to go into the SRO area around the stage. From there I was going to try to get over to the left side to my seat again, but as I entered the SRO area, Jimmie Vaughan appeared on stage with his guitar. I made my way up close to the stage for that, boy! Then I just stood there for the rest of the time, as B.G. Jr. came out to intro Ron and then the man himself appeared. So I wound up being about 15 feet from Ron and slightly behind him, on his left, as he spoke. It was amazing to be part of that, even though I don’t think I showed up on very many videos of the event. (If you do spot me, it’ll probably be when I’m clapping my hands over my head, which I did a lot. Look for the white shirt and the overhead claps.) I think C-SPAN2 — and thank them for televising this! — had an overhead camera positioned so that I was literally straight behind Ron and the podium from their angle, so you don’t see me at all even though I’m right in the middle of the shot. Ah well.

I stayed for most of the Sara Evans concert, even though I probably would have been more excited right then to be talking with folks. It seemed right to play fanboy for her for a little bit, to cap off the night and make her show more of an event. I shook her hand from the SRO area during one of the first songs, then helped point out a little girl on her dad’s shoulder, who was reaching out trying to also shake Sara’s hand. It took a few songs, but Sara eventually spotted the tyke and got a surprised and delighted smile on her face as she bent down to shake that little hand. That was pretty fun.

Strangely, the only significant police presence occurred during this concert. I was paying no attention behind me, but Caitanya came up and alerted me to the police behind us, standing in a row with their plastic cuffs at the ready, just within the SRO area in front of the left side entrance to it (the one near our seats; I assume there were more on the right side entrance). He wondered why they were there; I did too, but couldn’t see any reason to let that ruin the fun. Later on as we all filed out, I spotted a big group of these cops leaving too, and they clearly weren’t on high alert at that point, anyway. I guess we didn’t give them much trouble (LOL).

Caitanya with Ron Paul

I ran into Bob Dole on my way from the Target Center to the Lone Tree Annex (a drinking establishment about a block away) for the after-party; didn’t say hi to him, quite, but it added to the “other-world-liness” of the whole event. I read somewhere else that someone encountered William Kristol in another establishment on this same block on this same day. Hmmmmm.

Anyway, Caitanya was a minor and Terry had no ID, so they couldn’t go to the after-party. They ended up at Applebee’s across the street. I went into the Annex and found Mark Scibilia playing for the crowd, but became disappointed with the venue when I realized that it just wasn’t conducive to a gathering of intellectuals. There were no seats anywhere (except at 3 bars, one of which was in a VIP area where RP was), and despite being broken into a handful of different rooms, there was no quiet place to talk. I did find Maureen Moore mixing it up with the peons outside the VIP area and we chatted briefly, but I was trying to find my other Oregon people and it wasn’t easy to do that in a dark club with numerous rooms and 2 or 3 entrances. Eventually we (the Oregon vanful) all decided to go to Applebee’s instead. Our waitress there was great; I forgot her name, but IIRC she looked like a Pacific island native, or east Asian perhaps.

Scott Sutton called during this time and we tried to figure out how to pick up his “Pssst” cards from our hotel; they had helpfully arrived there shortly after we had left after checking out. We weren’t planning to go back that way, and didn’t have room for more boxes in our van. Arrgh. (He eventually arranged to have someone else from Oregon pick them up, the next day I think.) The idea had been to distribute them during the events in the Twin Cities; I’m not sure how many were distributed Wednesday but the remainder are now back here in Oregon for us to use.

After some rest at Applebees, we hit the road for the long pull back to Oregon. We hadn’t done our mapwork ahead of time and wound up pulling off the road to debate which route to take back. We settled on simply reversing our course, and Terry and I took the front-seat night shift leaving Minneapolis. I drove us across Minnesota into North Dakota as we cracked each other up with absurd humor (an easy task when we were both so exhausted). Everyone else slept, except when our delirious giggling woke Helen up. She begged to know what was so funny; Terry insisted that it was stupid, but eventually explained it to her after she took over the driver’s seat. (Yes, it was stupid. Mighty funny to two very sleepy Oregon RPers though.)

To our delight, the westbound I-94 is much smoother than the eastbound I-94. No (or, not much) bouncing this time. ND gave way easily enough to Montana, and we sailed across to Idaho, then Oregon, with no more glitches. We even ran into a few interested parties along the way and did a bit more “Paulination” here and there. Dropping off Helen, we zoomed across Oregon and back home again. We did have one last adventure, when Clint forgot to pay attention in central Oregon and we ended up going on 22 instead of 20. That put us headed near Terry’s place though, so we dropped him off, then went back down to Corvallis via a back route through Stayton and Scio.

stretching our legs in Sisters, OR (Terry Hamel)

Now we’re back in normal-land; time to buckle down and get to work right here at home!