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National media have mostly ignored the fact Texas Congressman Ron Paul came within 152 votes of leader Michele Bachmann in the Iowa Presidential Straw Poll earlier this month. Now local Republicans are doing some Ron Paul ignoring of their own. And feisty local supporters of the feisty congressman are up in arms about it.

On August 3, Grant McCallum, one of the organizers of the Cleveland-area Ron Paul Meet Up group, noticed the Republican Party of Cuyahoga County had a presidential preference poll on its website. Paul and Mitt Romney were tied for second with 22 votes each. Tim Pawlenty led with 24. With those kinds of numbers and 200 Meet Up members, pushing Paul to the top wasn’t hard.

“I sent out an e-mail to the Meet Up list that said, Hey, the local Republican Party has a straw poll; vote for Ron Paul,” says McCallum. “I got a response back an hour later saying, good news, Ron Paul is way in front with 15.2 percent.”

This article appears in Aug 17-23, 2011.

Vince Grzegorek has been with Scene since 2007 and editor-in-chief since 2012. He previously worked at Discount Drug Mart and Texas Roadhouse.

22 replies on “Ron Paul Lovers Blow Up Republican Poll in Cuyahoga County”

  1. Just goes to show that the Republican establishment is scared of a straight talking candidate with integrity and the will to do what most politicians won’t even talk about! The media blackout that the news outlets are using to sideline Paul’s message is coming back to bite them in the amount of true publicity he is receiving from factual news outlets. R.P.2012!

  3. It sounds to me like Dr. Paul may have to run as a, dare I say it, independant. I voted for him as a Libertarian every time I found him on the ballot. It’s getting to be cool to be a Libertarian these days, their all over Fox News, the only outlet that recognizes his existance. Remember, WE the PEOPLE run this country and Dr. Paul has been beating that drum as long as my feeble old brain can remember.

  4. I am an ardent supporter of Ron Paul’s message of liberty, prosperity and peace. I vote and promote for Ron Paul as often as I can but, I can’t think of anyone that I can call or e-mail and tell them, “MOBILIZE! WE HAVE A POLL TO BLOW UP!” None of my friends are as avid as I am, but they agree with most of what Ron Paul says and would vote for him if they were given the chance to, TOMORROW, without being brow-beaten by the media for 8 months leading up to an election about how ‘unelectable’ he is… I even have a young classmate of mine at ASU who is an Obama supporter who is willing to vote for Ron Paul in the primary and is considering voting for him in the general. I know Ron Paul appeals to the majority of Americans with his, “Let’s stop spending trillions of dollars to bomb other countries that are ABSOLUTELY NO THREAT AT ALL TO US.” foreign policy. The rest of his platform is mostly about what he is NOT going to do… less about what he is going to do. No man runs the country, that’s arrogance and ignorance. The president is supposed to be the guy who acts in emergencies and helps execute laws that congress writes… when did it become to job of the president to CAMPAIGN for universal healthcare or budget issues… that is the job of the 600 or so congressmen and senators we have elected, NOT the king of America. It’s as if Ron Paul is saying, “Kids, we have to sit down and have a serious talk about America. What it is and where it’s going.” Because in my 28 years I haven’t seen a single president to has behaved in a way that men like Thomas Jefferson and George Washington would have approved-of. Do you think George Washington would have ok’d going into Libya or would be talking about attacking Iran? Would Thomas Jefferson have campaigned for universal healthcare? I doubt it…

  5. It was a nice try on their part, but they’ve obviously lying. Their poll was in fact set up to block an IP address from voting multiple times. I voted in it once and then refreshed the page and it said something to the effect of, “Hey, you already voted, nice try.”

    So they’re full of it, especially when I know 10 people personally who voted for Paul in it. What jerks.

  6. This just shows how manipulative these polls have become. If it doesn’t go in their way, they simply delete and make excuses. It’s time we had REAL candidates and REAL elections.
    I’m sorry, but it’s easy to rig things when you control the media, the voting machines and the politicians. Anyone who truly believes in liberty and taking this country back to the Constitution, needs to check out Ron Paul and his beliefs. I did and now I am truly excited about Ron Paul 2012.

  8. Ron Paul raised 1.8 million dollars in small donations in 24 hours…It must have been one rich guy…donating multiple times.

  10. I personally voted on 3 different occasions after hearing about the vote reset. The 2nd time, I even verified that it wouldn’t let me vote again. So when they reset the votes they also cleared their record that I had voted. I need no more proof that they cheated!
    Ron Paul 2012!

  13. If we all continue to spread the Paul message, then things like the primaries, “whether he runs as an independent,” and various other questions could be made irrelevant, at least in states that still have the write-in option on their ballots.

    They do still allow write-ins, don’t they?

    Vote Ron Paul, even if you have to write him in.

    And anyway, if he loses, we can look at the inevitable devastation, and say, “I told you so!”

  14. Posted by Revere Paul:
    “Ron Paul raised 1.8 million dollars in small donations in 24 hours…It must have been one rich guy…donating multiple times.”

    If the guy (or gal) who wrote the money bomb script knew his elbow from a hole in the ground, they’d have kept a record of who donated what and their IP addresses. If you know how to write scripts, it’s almost trivial to do.

  15. wow this articles bad hey how about in the poll you design it so you cant vote more than once..its doable it happens all the time..so why not?….. thats what i thought

  16. This is why the GOP has no hope of winning the White House. They have angered too many Ron Paul supporters. And don’t suck up to us now. It won’t work. The GOP has chased us away permanently. I have no love left for the GOP. I despise the GOP Politburo and their media lapdogs, especially at the Wall Street Journal. The folk at the Journal still don’t want to admit Ron Paul is the race. They report on the various campaigns, but never mention Ron Paul’s name. How stupid is that for a so-called “respected” newspaper? It’s a lackey of the GOP Politburo. Nobody has done more to alienate us than Karl Rove.

  17. The deal is that we are the most organized. Not by the Paul campaign, but a truly free market of supporters not in some pyramidal organization. Paul believes in the the foundational concepts of this country…Liberty being prime…and does not dictate down. He just supports our liberty and we responds freely with ZERO direction. We are so much larger than in 2008…we are the ANTI-BORG and we will destroy your CENTRALIZATION 😛

  20. I have been banned from several of the GOP co-opted type on-line faux TEA party organization for mentioning Ron Paul what they considered to be “too often” in their forums section. And have been warned about posting several Ron Paul related YouTube video’s and article’s, or commenting to one’s that other member’s have posted in several of the local 9:12 MeetUp group’s. Which to the best of my knowledge these group’s and organization’s “claim” to represent constitutional values and also claim to be non-bias in nature. Just don’t talk about Ron Paul I guess. Yes…the establishment republican party must be freaking fracking out because the two “real” TEA party type candidate’s won the top two position’s in the Iowa straw poll a little over a week ago. And you know what that means. Their so called media named frontrunner’s who were way back in the pack in that straw poll have a lot of catching up to do. The fact remains that the GOP would rather that the TEA party as a movement just go away. That is, unless they can hijack it and control it to their advantage in support of their establishment candidate’s and legislation like SB5. Ron Paul and his supporter’s adopted a slogan four years ago at the Rally For The Republic…Bring The GOP Back To It’s Root’s. Looks like the establishment GOP would rather not return to their real conservative root’s. And if that’s the case…they got a problem. Because like the song says…you can’t keep a good man down.

  21. The Libertarian party has been outlawed in Ohio. Again. So if Ron Paul is truly a Libertarian… It’s too bad that Libertarians have to run as Republicans in this state and largely in the two party federal elections. Two party rule, keeps us flipping back and forth. Both parties fear other choices. The media depends on the flipping and flopping. MSM doesn’t cover ballot access generally. Libertarians and other parties sued the state over its unconstitutional ballot access laws and won in 2006. Did you hear about it? Did you hear that, among other things, HB 194 outlaws all third parties in Ohio.

    During the 2010 November election cycle, Matt Brakey distanced himself from the standard republican agenda by telling an auditorium full of Shaw High School students and faculty that he wanted marijuana legalized. The Libertarian light went on above his head. But he ran as a republican. Just sayin…

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