Eye Witness Accounts / Diagnosis of Problems

Have you worked on the ground before and on Caucus / Primary day/grassroots? I am behind in my email / forum reading. (3 family mishaps) and this may be a REPEAT. But we've been critiquing the campaign, etc. Maybe grassroots people can help the campaign solve specific issues. This letter seems to show great leadership among the grassroots constituency. So how about adding your brief critiques here if you worked in Iowa and/or NH the night of and leading up to the event. IF this is thread duplication, please import this letter where it belongs. Most of us have experienced our own nightmares in business. Maybe the smart techno people have ideas regarding phones, etc. What the heck, we want more involvement. Can we help somehow? This is my stab at diagnosis and not just ragging on. THANKS!

OK, this came after the Iowa Caucus. It was in my email. This is from a Wisconsin Student. And i MAY have seen this here before, but i don't know. Mike has the option of shutting this thread down, with my apologies. Thanks.
QUOTE:

My name is Alex Stewart and I'm a member of the Ron Paul Meetup Group at UW Whitewater.

Just as of today, I got back home from "Christmas Vacation" in Iowa program. Unfortunately, I won't be able to attend any Meetup events until Jan. 20 when I am back in the Whitewater area. I wanted to take time to share my experience with you, what I learned and saw from the Iowa campaign.

I am pleased to report that student support for Ron Paul is very strong. We had 278 students attend the Christmas vacation coming from 39 different states and 4 different countries.

When being assigned to different camps, I and 24 other people were sent to the a camp in Floyd county, focusing on the cities of Waterloo, Cedar Falls, and a one-day blitz aimed at Waverly.

The largest camp was stationed in Boone county, close to Des Moines. Stationed there were Jeff Frazee, a guy in his mid 20's who I believed was a paid member on the campaign, Dallas whom I'm sure you have heard about if not met, and Craig Bergman, one of the campaign managers with Ron Paul.

>From the Boone camp is where we received our direct orders. Starting everyday at about 10 o' clock and lasting until about 5 we went door to door canvassing dropping off literature and trying to identify firm and potential supporters and voters. From there, we would return to camp and combine the groups findings into a combined list. Our intent for the evenings were to phonebank (call names from a list given to us by those in charge, mostly Frazee) and find and persuade people to attend their caucus and vote for Paul. Unfortunately, we were unable to do so due to problems regarding the phones.

We were supposed to have pre-paid phones provided by Verizon. The phones did not arrive until Jan.1; whether it was the campaign's fault or Verizon's I'm still not sure. Even when we got the phones, the plan was set up incorrectly so that when we were able to use them, the phones were in roaming despite where we went in the Northeast Iowa area. So after reporting back to Frazee, the campaign made a decision not to use the phones because it would cost $2 per minute.

When it came to the actual day of the caucus, the campaign was supposed to provide each camp and everybody at the camp a list of potential and firm supporters found and recorded over both parts of the Christmas Vacation. Due to more technical difficulties on behalf of the campaign, Frazee and the national campaign managers were unable to get any camp the list of voters.

So on Jan.3, we were already off to a bad start. My partner and I took off to oversee and get out as many voters as possible in the Cerro Gordo county, specifcally Mason City. We made an effort to connect with the county coordinator which was a great help.

>From there we met Dr.David Haas, a very respected man in the community, and Pam Anderson, a very dedicated paid supporter from the campaign. It seemed that the local and community support had done a very productive job in turning out and identifying supporters among the community.

They also seemed extremely organized, much more so than the national campaign. When we met these individuals, my partner and I had to ask ourselves, "Why didn't the national campaign and the Christmas Vacation volunteers make more of an effort to meet with these individuals before?"

By working and connecting more with the grassroots supporters, I'm positive that we would have been even more productive. At the caucus we met with even more Paul supporters who arrived early to advertise and turn out as many Paul supporters as possible.

One guy that we talked to was a precinct captain and two other guys we met were actually from Minnesota who came to help! After listening to them, they said they went to their area's Ron Paul Headquarters and tried to get information on how they could help in Iowa.
They then told me that the headquarters actually discouraged them from participating at all and it was near impossible to get any information from them. So from there they took matters into their own hands. They were amazingly helpful during the caucus.

In general, I was rather dissappointed in the lack of organization of the national campaign. Despite the fact that every volunteer I was with was extremely intelligent and motivated, it's hard to be as productive as possible when you have lack of competence from those who rank over you.

Something else that alarmed me the "sliminess" of the other campaigns. Being exposed to "ground zero" you really start to see how low some of the other candidate's campaigns can sink.

In the Waterloo/Cedar Falls area, the Hillary campaign was putting up yard signs and a whole bunch of Hillary advertisements in foreclosed and abandoned houses.

On top of that, we received information saying that the Hillary campaign was going to nursing homes where they would tell the residents that they were going to a party on Jan.3.
The campaign literally came and wheeled the residents out and shipped them to the caucus. The Obama campaign was telling Waterloo/Cedar Falls residents that the closest Republican caucus was being held in Des Moines, which was almost 3 hours away, but the Democratic Caucus was being held right in Waterloo/Cedar Falls.

So despite, some of the difficulties we faced during the campaign, I feel more charged and motivated than ever. It was a great experiencing teaching me the necessities of campaigning.
When I come back to school on Jan.20, I will be more active than ever promoting and campaigning for Ron Paul in the Whitewater area. Never have I learned so much about politics, the candidates and what their issues and views are than in the past 2 weeks.

I now also see the complete necessity for organization among the campaign. So when the rest of the students and I return from break, it is in my best hopes than we can organize and become more active than ever.

Thanks and best of wishes,
Ron Paul Supporter, Alex Stewart