Ron Paul 2012 presidential campaign
From 2011 to 2012, Ron Paul, a U.S. representative from Texas, unsuccessfully ran for the 2012 Republican Party nomination for the president of the United States.
On April 14, 2011, Paul announced the formation of a "testing-the-waters" account, and had stated that he would decide whether he would enter the race by at least early May. Paul announced the formation of an exploratory committee on April 26 in Des Moines, Iowa. He declared his presidential candidacy on May 13 in Exeter, New Hampshire.
On July 12, Paul announced that he would not seek another term as the representative of Texas's 14th district to focus on his presidential campaign. By April 2012, the campaign had raised more than $38 million.
On May 14, Paul announced that he would end active campaigning for the remaining primary states and instead focus on delegate selection conventions at the state level. On July 14, Paul failed to win a plurality of delegates at the final convention in the state of Nebraska, which ended his ability to ensure a speaking spot at the Republican National Convention, where Paul's campaign won 190 delegates.
Background and pre-campaign events
Heavily speculated as a possible Republican candidate in the 2012 presidential election, Paul appeared in the 2010 Conservative Political Action Conference straw poll. Paul won the poll, defeating Mitt Romney, who had won it the previous three years. Paul also won the 2011 CPAC straw poll with 30 percent of the vote. Following that, he also won the paid, online Arizona Tea Party Patriots straw poll on February 28, 2011, with 49% of the vote.In February 2011, Paul asked supporters to donate to his Liberty Political Action Committee to fund trips to Iowa and elsewhere to explore a possible 2012 presidential candidacy. On February 21, a Presidents' Day money bomb raised around $400,000 in 24 hours. Liberty PAC raised more than $700,000 during its February relaunch. By the end of March, Liberty PAC had raised more than $1 million.
On April 14, 2011, it was announced that Paul had formed a "testing-the-waters" organization, similar to Newt Gingrich's efforts in exploring his potential candidacy. Paul's spokesman, Jesse Benton was quoted as saying, "He remains undecided on what his plans will be, but as a final decision draws closer, his team has put the pieces in place for him to flip a switch and hit the ground running if he decides to run for president." Paul announced the formation of an exploratory committee in Des Moines, Iowa on April 26 in preparation for a potential bid for the Republican presidential nomination.
On May 5, Paul participated in a debate in Greenville, South Carolina among only five candidates. A moneybomb was scheduled for the same day, which raised over $1 million for Paul's campaign.
Campaign developments
Announcements
On May 13, 2011, in Exeter, New Hampshire, Paul announced his decision to seek the Republican nomination in the 2012 election. The announcement was broadcast live nationally on ABC's Good Morning America.On May 14, 2012, Paul made a statement on the campaign's website that he would no longer be actively campaigning in remaining state primaries, but would instead continue his presidential bid by seeking to collect delegates at caucuses and state conventions for the Republican National Convention in August 2012.
GOP debates and straw polls
He participated in a debate on June 13, 2011, at Saint Anselm College in Goffstown, New Hampshire.On June 18, 2011, Paul won the Southern Republican Leadership Conference straw poll with 41%, winning by a large margin on Jon Huntsman, who trailed second with 25% and Michele Bachmann with 13%. On June 19 he again won the Clay County Iowa StrawPoll with 25%, while Michele Bachmann trailed second with 12%. Paul indicated in a June 2011 interview that if nominated, he would consider former New Jersey Superior Court judge Andrew Napolitano as his running mate.
Paul also participated in another debate on August 11, 2011, in Ames, Iowa, and overwhelmingly won the post-debate polls. He then came in second in the Ames Straw Poll with 4,671 votes, narrowly losing to Michele Bachmann by 152 votes or 0.9%, a statistical first-place tie finish according to some in the news media. He received the fourth most votes for a candidate in the history of the Ames Straw Poll.
On August 20, in the New Hampshire Young Republicans Straw Poll Paul came again first, again overwhelmingly, with 45%, Mitt Romney trailing second with 10%. On August 27, in the Georgia State GOP Straw Poll Paul came in a close second place behind Georgia resident Herman Cain, who had 26% of the vote, with Paul receiving 25.7%.
On September 5, Paul attended the Palmetto Freedom Forum in South Carolina along with fellow candidates Herman Cain, Mitt Romney, Michele Bachmann and Newt Gingrich. The forum was paneled by congressmen Steve King of Iowa, senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina and Dr. Robert P. George, the founder of the American Principles Project which hosted the event.
On September 12, Paul attended the Tea Party Republican presidential debate broadcast by CNN. During the event, Paul received both unexpected "cheers" and "boos" for his responses to the questions posed by the debate moderators and fellow debate participants. When Rick Santorum questioned Paul about his position regarding the motivation behind the September 11 attacks, some of the audience jeered his response that U.S. foreign occupation was the "real motivation behind the September 11 attacks and the vast majority of other instances of suicide terrorism".
When one of the moderators posed a hypothetical scenario of a healthy 30-year-old man requiring intensive care but neglected to be insured pressing Paul with "Are you saying that society should just let him die?", several audience members cheered "yeah!" Paul disagreed with the audience reaction stating that while he practiced as a doctor in a Catholic hospital before the Medicaid era, "We never turned anybody away from the hospital." Paul elaborated further a few days later that he believed the audience was cheering self-reliance and that "the media took it and twisted it".
Jack Burkman, a Republican Party strategist, was asked of Paul's performance in the debate. While Burkman stated that his national radio program's polling suggested Rick Perry won the debate, he believed Paul's support is extremely deep like Democrat support for Bobby Kennedy decades before and predicted "he could come from behind as the horses turn for home and win the nomination."
On September 18, Paul won the California state GOP straw poll with 44.9% of the vote, held at the JW Marriott in downtown Los Angeles. Out of 833 ballots cast, Paul garnered the greatest number of votes with 374, beating his nearest competitor Texas Gov. Rick Perry by a wide margin.
On September 24, Paul finished fifth in the GOP's Florida Presidency 5 straw poll with 10.4% of the vote. Paul won with 37% of the vote at the Values Voter Summit on October 8; the highest ever recorded at the event.
On October 22, Paul won the Ohio Republican straw poll with the support of 53% of the participants, more than double the support of the second-place candidate, Herman Cain.
Paul won the National Federation of Republican Assemblies Presidential Straw Poll of Iowa voters on October 29 with 82% of the vote.
On November 19, Paul won the North Carolina Republican Straw Poll with 52% of the vote, finishing well ahead of the second-place candidate, Newt Gingrich, who received 22% of the vote.
Polls
In an August Rasmussen Reports poll of likely voters across the political spectrum asking if they would vote for Paul or Barack Obama, the response narrowly favored Obama over Paul, but by a smaller margin than the same question asked a month ago. Paul finished 3rd in a late-August poll of likely Republican primary voters, trailing Rick Perry and Mitt Romney and ahead of Michele Bachmann, climbing from 4th position which, according to another poll, he occupied only a few days earlier.In a September Harris Poll, respondents chose Paul over Obama.
In the Illinois Republican Straw Poll held in the beginning of November, Paul took 52% of the votes of those polled with Herman Cain coming in second with 18%.
In a November 10–12 Bloomberg News poll of Iowans likely to participate in the January 3, 2012 Republican caucuses, Paul was in a four-way tie at 19 percent with Cain, Romney and Gingrich at 20, 18 and 17 percent respectively.
A Bloomberg News poll released on November 16, 2011, showed Paul at 17% in New Hampshire, in second place to Romney's 40%.
A Public Policy Polling poll released on December 13, 2011, put Paul in a statistical tie for first in Iowa with Newt Gingrich, polling 21% and 22%, respectively. The RealClearPolitics.com average shows Paul in second place in New Hampshire at 18.3% on December 28, 2011. Public Policy Polling results from December 18 show that Paul is now leading in Iowa with 23%, followed by Romney at 20% and Gingrich at 14%.
A January 2012 Rasmussen Reports poll of likely voters across the political spectrum found that in a hypothetical two-candidate race between Paul and Barack Obama, respondents preferred Obama over Paul. The RealClearPolitics.com average of polls also found Obama favored over Paul, in a two-candidate race.
A January Pew Research Center poll of registered voters across the political spectrum on the eve of the South Carolina primary found that in a hypothetical three-way race between Obama, Romney, and Paul, with Paul running as a third-party candidate, respondents would choose Obama over Romney and Paul.
In polls of likely Republican primary voters on the eve of the South Carolina Republican primary, Paul placed third both in South Carolina and nationally, trailing Romney and Gingrich.
A Rasmussen poll in April 2012 showed Paul as the only Republican candidate able to defeat Obama in a head-to-head match-up. Paul beat Obama by one point in the poll with 44% of the vote.