Ryan ChartrandWhen independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader came to Cal Poly to speak in late September, hundreds piled into the auditorium and overflowed out into the hallway outside, hustling and bustling to get a seat. Mixed in the shuffle stood Scott Waddell, a student passionate about politics but without a candidate.
A friend had e-mailed him information about the Nader which peaked his interest. Not finding that either of the two major-party candidates resonated with him, Waddell decided to go hear Nader speak.
As the Peace and Freedom party candidate took the stage, he received a several minute-long standing ovation from an energetic and vocal crowd.
Waddell now looks back on the day he was converted to a third-party supporter.
“I felt like (Nader) was talking about the issues – unlike the two people we saw on TV last night. He was articulate and what he said just made sense,” Waddell, an electrical engineering senior, said a month later. “Candidates with very little support aren’t afraid to talk about the issues because they have nothing to lose.”
For Waddell and a handful of other students, the change they want to see in Washington is rarely reflected in the issues debated on television by the Republicans and Democrats. Instead, they find themselves swimming against the current, seeking out candidates like Nader, libertarian-at-heart and former Republican nominee Ron Paul, Libertarian Party candidate Bob Barr and even Green Party canidate Cynthia McKinney. These students are a minority – often single digit percentage points in the polls – but many are adamant and vocal about their support for their respective candidates.
“I really feel like I should vote for who I like,” Waddell explained. “A lot of people say I’m wasting my vote. I know my candidate’s not going to win, but I know it’s better to vote for someone I like, even if he’ll lose.”
It’s a sentiment echoed not just by Nader fans, but by third-party supporters everywhere.
The so-called “Ron Paul Revolution” that rippled through college campuses around the country from the end of 2007 through the primary season surprised many in the mainstream media and encapsulated this often overlooked subculture of third-party support.
The excitement caught on at Cal Poly too. Slogans supporting Paul were chalked on campus sidewalks and walls and more than a few “Ron Paul Revolution” bumper stickers rode around the backs of student cars in the parking lot.
Still today, long after McCain became the presumptive Republican nominee, “Ron Paul for President” posters still peer out of college apartment windows near campus.
Paul’s strong and surprising youthful following began to be noted in the mainstream media after he broke all GOP fundraising records and hauled in $4.2 million dollars from Internet fundraising in a single day, a planned fundraising day surge his supporters call a “money bomb.”
But Cal Poly mechanical engineering senior and Paul supporter Stephen Murphy said that for those closely following Paul, it hardly came as a surprise.
“A lot of Americans have very Libertarian tendencies,” he said. “That’s why the people inside the (Ron Paul) movement weren’t surprised when he raked in millions of dollars in a single day. Inside the movement it just made sense that he would.”
Murphy first stumbled across Paul’s campaign while surfing the Web and he started watching YouTube videos to learn more about the candidate. In the months that followed he became increasingly involved in campaigning via the Internet, eventually starting the “California Polytechnic State University of San Luis Obispo Students for Ron” Facebook group, which currently has 62 members.
In fact, much of Paul’s success in reaching out to young voters like Murphy has been attributed to his almost rock star-like Internet presence. YouTube videos, Facebook groups and blogs all worked to get the message out to the portion of the younger demographic already enthralled by his almost-stubbornly unwavering policies on free trade and fiscal conservatism, and his vocal opposition to both the war on drugs at home and the war against terrorism in the Middle East.
A simple YouTube search for ‘Ron Paul’ yields more than 175,000 results, many of which are homemade videos by college students looking to spread Paul’s message through Internet and grassroots campaigning.
“He’s a Constituitionalist,” explained Colin McKim, Cal Poly horticulure junior. “Ron Paul still believes in principles of the founding fathers. Some people might think those principles are outdated in modern society, but some college students do still understand why they’re important (principles) and those are the people that flock to Ron Paul.”
McKim, who identifies himself as Libertarian, said that since Paul is no longer on the Republican ticket, he’ll either vote for Libertarian candidate Bob Barr or not at all. McKim concedes that either way his vote is “pointless” in California, a blue state reliably owned by the Democrats since 1992.
Many of Paul’s supporters, like Nader’s, lament his exclusion from the debates and say the media unjustly ignores or criticizes their candidate.
“The media and Republicans have been very unfair to Ron Paul,” said Jacob Coffin, industrial engineering junior. “The pundits make fun of him and call his supporters ‘crazies.'”
Coffin first took notice of the candidate in some of the earliest Republican primary debates and said he got increasingly involved in campaigning for Paul from there. “I found him to be an actual straight-talker, an actual maverick, unlike McCain,” he said.
With Paul excluded from the final primary debates, Coffin began to use to the Internet’s arsenal of tools as an alternative to get the message out.
Similar to Murphy’s group, he created the “Cal Poly Students for Ron Paul” Facebook group, which now has 38 members – about twice as many as Coffin realistically expected to join since he didn’t create the group until almost the end of the Republican primaries and didn’t spend time recruiting.
Coffin also joined with MeetUp.com groups organized around Paul. Although a general social network type site aimed at facilitating meetings between like-minded people around any variety of topics or causes, many Paul supporters used MeetUp.com to organize campaigning events in their areas.
Through meetings at the San Luis Obispo Farmers’ Market and other local hotspots, supporters gathered to talk about Paul and to promote his campaign by handing out fliers, posters and shirts.
Coffin now promises to vote write ‘Ron Paul’ in on the November ballot.
Still, others point to the obvious failure of third parties to garner significant support as proof that voters – particularly young voters – just don’t care about politics, let alone radical third party politics.
“Most students are more interested in this presidential election because of Obama,” said Cal Poly political science professor Alison Keleher. Even so, she’s not overly optimistic about a surge in youth turnout at the polls next month.
“Young people are notoriously unreliable voters,” said Keleher, who specializes in elections. “Young people and student turnout will be higher, but it remains to be seen by how much. Being interested in politics and actually having an opinion and transferring that to voting is a huge leap.”
She’s also skeptical about the impact of campaigns like Paul’s and Nader’s.
“I think it’s great that so many students showed up to see (Nader) at Cal Poly, but that’s also partly because he’s kind of an enigma,” Keleher said.
As for Ron Paul, he “raised a huge amount of money but that didn’t translate into turnout (in the primaries).”
“I think that only by studying the Internet for a few more years will we know if it really has an effect on elections to the extent that it transfers into voter turnout. I think the Internet is a tool to start political conversation and to raise a lot of money. It’s really too soon to see if it will affect actual votes. In 2004, Howard Dean made a lot of money, too, but
that didn’t translate into votes for him.”
Murphy agreed that there is a lot of political apathy among the student population in general, but he said he believes that third-party and independent candidates are gaining ground among youth voters.
The Libertarians did in fact have had their most successful year to date in 2001, with 301 party members holding elective office, a 45 percent increase over one year. In 2004, Libertarian presidential candidate Michael Badnarik received 397, 265 votes, more than all non-major party presidential candidates except Nader, who received 463,653 as the Green Party candidate.
Nader had been previously blamed by some Democrats for stealing the liberal vote from Democratic candidate Al Gore in 2000, when Republican George Bush defeated him in Florida by only 537 votes.
Nader supporters like Waddell and psychology senior Misha Davies, however, hardly see his ousting of Gore as something to be ashamed of.
“It’s just sad that third-party candidates are seen as ‘spoilers,'” Davies said.
“People think they need to vote for the lesser of two evils, rather than someone they truly agree with.”
Following his speech at Cal Poly, Davies asked the candidate for advice on running a grassroots-type campaign when going up against big-money, major-party politicians.
She said his speech and the answer to her question settled her decision to vote for him next week.
“I really liked what he talked about. Nader keeps coming back because he’s a consumer advocate and he doesn’t give up because he’s trying to fight for the people,” she said.
She too promised to vote for her candidate come November, knowing full and well he has no viable chance at the presidency.
The one thing that all third-party supporters believe in is the message that they send out with their ballots.
“It’s less of a democracy when it’s controlled by two parties,” Ron Paul supporter Murphy said. “It means America’s fate is left up to the media and just two people.”
Keleher however, chalked the decision to vote third party up to a certain factor of “youthful rebellion.”
Perhaps so, but in that case students like Murphy, McKim, Coffin, Davies and Waddell don’t see themselves as rebels entirely without a cause.
“Perhaps in 30 years when all of us Ron Paul supporters are old enough to run for office you’ll see a resurgence of his ideas in the political mainstream,” said Murphy.