Today’s Wall Street Journal notes that Ron Paul has found a hotbed of support in America’s 49th state:
Within weeks of his announcement in March that he would run for the presidential nomination, Mr. Paul’s supporters in Alaska began informally campaigning. They clustered on cold, dark afternoons to wave Ron Paul signs at intersections. When Fox News left Mr. Paul out of a televised forum in New Hampshire with the other Republican candidates last month, they stood in front of a Fox News affiliate in Anchorage to protest.
Mr. Paul’s national campaign is now trying to harness the local support. A few weeks ago, Craig Bergman, a consultant for Mr. Paul’s campaign, phoned volunteers across the country to find pockets of local enthusiasm that he could tap. He was impressed with the “natural support” for Mr. Paul here — so just more than a week ago, he opened offices in Anchorage and Fairbanks. Mr. Paul now has eight full-time staffers in the state, more than he had in Michigan, Florida or South Carolina. Friday, Mr. Paul hosted a live phone call with Alaskan voters.
In some sense, Alaska represents both a natural constituency for a candidate with limited government views, and an opportunity for one with fervent grassroots supporters:
While there have been no official polls in Alaska, local pollsters and officials say Mr. Paul could garner at least 10% — and possibly upward of 20% — of the vote. That compares with 4% to 6% of the national vote, according to polls of Republicans.
“Alaska is a very, very limited-government state — they aren’t even embarrassed to use the word ‘libertarian’ up there,” Mr. Paul, 72 years old, said in an interview.
In Alaska, the caucus is in large part a numbers game. Many of the state’s 683,000 residents live in hard-to-reach spots outside of the road system. Randy Ruedrich, head of the Republican Party in Alaska and a former libertarian, expects just 5,000 to 7,000 to turn out at the Republican caucuses.
Of course, there’s that persistent problem of trying to get a bunch of individualist libertarians to work together in a group:
Getting a group of individualists to stick to the same approach is tough. At Mr. Paul’s Anchorage campaign office last week, staffer Kerri Price held a conference call to ask local volunteers what they had done so far to campaign.
“I’ve been out on street corners and whatnot holding signs,” said Aaron Morse, a volunteer in Anchorage.
“Does anyone have any lists of supporters, or has anyone been out canvassing, or do we have any precinct captains?” Ms. Price asked.
“Nope,” Mr. Morse said.
Heh.
Alaska is a tough state… Alaska harkens to the time of the wild west in some ways due to the fact people live in groups of very small town some of which don’t have common road access.. I know this to be true becuase after I obtained my pilots lic I worked for a small cargo company what used single engine planes to transport mail, food, etc to small areas. Some people who live in Alaska seldom visit larger towns until warmer seasons.
The people of Alaska are in fact as described limited gov folks and this is becuase by nature they don’t demend on gov for anything.
In some ways I miss Alaska but I don’t miss the cold cold days and nights at all. When you have to fly in -20 weather not even a small Cesna heater can warm the plane even if you fly a few thousand feet high.
I do however miss the close nitch family unites and the honest to god Churches which support faith and family much like the “Waltons.”
Hopefully Alaska will be a good showing…. I just wish we ere in all the states earlier vs to close to the actual date of voting.
The last bastion of Americanism is Alaska, even Montana and Idaho are becoming sissified due to the fruits, nuts and flakes from La-La Land retiring there. Like we used to say in NoDak, “minus 40 keeps out the riff-raff”. Go RP!
If you look at the fundraising data at the FEC, Ron Paul will do very well in Alaska. Of the four remaining Republican candidates, he raised the most money there.
Ron Paul also leads in fundraising in Montana, North Dakota, and Hawaii, so he may walk away from Super Tuesday with a lot more delegates than people are expecting.