Linda Goldthorpe.... you have our backing!

E-mail the writer of this story and tell him the Ron Paul people will take care of Linda's campaign. We need one website dedicated to all these Ron Paul Republicans and raise money for them, rather than having to search and find them on the web. Let's discuss and see what we can do.

Fred Gray439-9374 - fgray@petoskeynews.com

http://www.petoskeynews.com/articles/2008/02/20/news/doc47bc...

Linda Goldthorpe, a 'Ron Paul Republican' plans to run against Casperson, Hooper in primary

By Fred Gray News-Review Staff Writer
Wednesday, February 20, 2008 9:17 AM EST

Linda Goldthorpe of Curtis in the Upper Peninsula plans to run in the Republican primary against state Rep. Tom Casperson and conservative Don Hooper, and if she prevails will run as a “Ron Paul Republican” against seven-term Democratic Congressman Bart Stupak.

Linda Goldthorpe of Curtis in the Upper Peninsula plans to run in the Republican primary against state Rep. Tom Casperson and conservative Don Hooper, and if she prevails will run as a “Ron Paul Republican” against seven-term Democratic Congressman Bart Stupak.

An outspoken disciple of Ron Paul, Goldthorpe says she has called herself a “pro-life Libertarian” for years.

She said she had no intention of running as a Republican until she realized that Ron Paul had returned to the party’s founding principles of limited government and low taxes. She said today’s Republicans have overspent and overreached their constitutional mandates.

“I’m embarrassed by Republicans bombing the world in my name,” she said, when asked to distinguish herself from Hooper, the maverick three-time candidate from Iron River who says the country cannot afford to pull out of the world’s trouble spots, including Iraq.

“We don’t need 700 military bases in 130 counties,” Goldthorpe said, adding that she supports strict enforcement of U.S. borders.

She said alliances between government and environmental groups unconstitutionally deny citizens the right to the use of their property.

A strict constitutionalist, Goldthorpe would work to do away with virtually all government agencies, including the department of education.

“It sounds radical, but that was part of the Republican Party platform during the Reagan years,” she said. “Congress can only do what the Constitution allows and must leave the rest to the states, if at all.

She said she considers Casperson to have been anointed by the party as the candidate to oppose Stupak, whom she calls a “false conservative.” In fact, she sees little difference between the politicians of both parties who fail to observe the Constitution.
Goldthorpe is a pro bono attorney who works from her home, where she home schools her two boys, Isaac, 16, and Joshua, 11. Her husband of 19 years, George Miller, is a corrections officer at the nearby Newberry Correctional Facility.

Their home sits on land six miles north of Curtis that has been owned by her family for five generations.

Goldthorpe says she likes her felony clients more than attorneys of any stripe, including prosecuting attorneys.

“I can’t trust them,” she told the News-Review in an interview in Petoskey.

A graduate of Cooley Law School in Lansing, Goldthorpe was sworn in as a lawyer at the Marquette County Court House, where the novel “Anatomy of a Murder” was filmed in the late 1950s and where the book’s author, John Voelker, presided as judge before rising to become a Michigan Supreme Court justice.

She practiced law for years in Marquette and Ontonagon before settling into her family home in Luce County.

Goldthorpe, who has never been elected to anything, is still gathering the 1,500 signatures she needs by mid-May to run in the primary. She plans to formally announce her candidacy in mid-March in Marquette and Petoskey.

Goldthorpe, like her opponents, admits she has few financial resources for the campaign.

Casperson, from Escanaba, despite being endorsed by the party, reported raising only $16,361 last quarter with $29,364 in the bank, against the $177,980 Stupak raised in the same period, with $417,076 cash on hand.

Hooper, who has received almost nothing from the Republican Party in his three previous campaigns for Congressman, said he has raised only $900 so far this time.

Fred Gray439-9374 - fgray@petoskeynews.com