Rand Paul received well over 70% of his campaign donations from outside Kentucky during the primary. Why would people from outside Kentucky fund a political campaign even long before the candidate had received any endorsements? The answer is that the CFL solicited donations for Rand along with conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. As early as July of 2009, Rand Paul was doing fundraising on Jones’ Show and he continues to appear as a beloved guest. The out of state Paul machine fundraising was a phenomenon that continued throughout the general election campaign.
During his campaign, Paul relied heavily on his father’s donor base and well-organized Internet “money bombs” to rake in more than $1.4 million in individual contributions — 69 percent of which was raised outside the Bluegrass State as of mid-October.[...]
[...] The largest share of Paul’s out-of-state individual contributions, $202,754, came from Texas, home to his veteran lawmaker father. Lake Jackson, Texas, zip code 77566, where his father has a district office, ranked sixth out of the top 10 zip codes with donations to Paul, according to the Center for Responsive Politics analysis.
The white supremacist group StormFront, led by Don Black, was also actively raising money for Rand Paul in deference to his father whom they strongly support.
There were five candidates for U.S. Senate in Kentucky’s 2010 primary. Two of them laid claim to the “Tea Party” label: Rand Paul and Bill Johnson. Johnson is a former Navy officer who had successfully run a multi-million dollar budget as a businessman. He is a Christian father and husband who ran on a Reagan conservative, pro-Israel, pro-military, pro-life, anti-regulation, fiscally conservative platform with the motto “Duty, Honor, Country” and was very much in keeping with Kentucky values. Strongly pro-energy, his main expertise was as a nuclear power plant engineer. Unlike Rand Paul, however, Johnson had virtually no name recognition and no machine backing him as Paul did. Johnson committed to using $200,000 of his own money, his family’s life savings, to fund his campaign. A January 11, 2010, report (.pdf) from the Kentucky Freedom Digest by Joshua Koch, Vice President of Kentucky’s Libertarian Party whose views are far more in keeping with Ron Paul than with Bill Johnson, explained that the Kentucky Tea Party was well on board with the Johnson campaign. The lack of support from libertarians was mostly due to Paul’s alienation tactics.
This preposterous claim to represent the Tea Parties is just the latest outlandish statement from the Rand Paul 2010 campaign. While it masquerades as the campaign for the reform of the Republican Party, Dr. Paul and the campaign have engaged in an effort to alienate Ron Paul supporters, libertarians, and members of various Tea Party affiliate groups.
The ironic part of this scenario is that these alienation efforts are working quite well. While Rand’s campaign claims to be leading the race by 19 points, recent polls not touted by [Paul campaign manager] David Adams’ propaganda machine have pointed to a sharp decline in Rand’s poll numbers. The reason for this seems to be two-fold: Rand is losing entire county-level volunteer organizations to Bill Johnson, and Rand insists on embracing the Mitch McConnell political machine that is actively supporting his opponent, Secretary Grayson.[...]
[...] The primary elections are still over four months away, but one thing has become clear: David Adams’ claims that Rand Paul is already the runaway victor in this race are beyond absurd. Judging from Bill Johnson’s explosive growth among the Tea Party crowd, it seems that the conservative base isn’t buying Adams’ tall tales, either. It seems that many Tea Partiers have picked someone other than Rand to represent them.
Next: Top-Down Forces Crush the Tea Party Candidate’s Candidacy
