Romney wins straw poll

The results are in from the rained out "Have Your Say Tampa Bay" straw poll and debate watch rally:

Romney 893; Paul; 534 Giuliani 39; Huckabee 37; Thompson 21; McCain 12; Hunter 4; Keyes 2; Tancredo 1.

Comments

Even Mrs. Tancredo voted for Romney.

I thought paul was going to win this?

I guess his big push to get the hippies there didnt work.

That's interesting, Romney and Paul are clearly the leaders, and the rest are canon foder. Why does the media still push Rudy, McCain and Huckabee?

Romney is a fake. If he wins the nomination, Hillary will win. Are the people insane? I think the terorist have put something in the water down there.

[jack]

Hippies? what decade are you living in? Another retard who needs an education!

[purdudude]

another good showing by the Ron Paul campaign. Congratulations

[Mike]

If you attended the Straw poll, then you would know that support for Ron Paul CLEARLY outnumbered any of the other candidates.
Unfortunately, many individuals were buying more than one ticket/vote. That is why the results are skewed!!!
Easily, Ron Paul had %70 of the support at the vote today.
R. Paul support was and is loud, proud, and growing in numbers!

Well the Paulistinians were certainly loud... and obnoxious. Manners and common decency seem to escape a large portion of the Paul group. These people are so angry.

Funny note: I was standing in line and witnessed a heated discussion between a Paul supporter and a Romney supporter. The Romney supporter, sporting a vietnam vet hat got hot because the Paul guy was spewing some 9/11 conspiracy wisdom. Good stuff :)

[Cedric]

I too saw people purchasing more than one ticket, and voting multiple times. What the hell is up with that??? I have plenty of money, I would have gladly skewed the results towards my candidate!!! I was out there all day, Paul supporters heavily out numbered all the other candidates... this smells funny.

[Dan]

St. Pete Straw Poll

From my personal observation, I'd say that Ron Paul supporters out numbered all other candidates' supporters that showed up by at least 5 to 1. In fact, I joked to a couple of people that Judy Riuliani actually had some supporters there and that I'd seen both of them.

The straw poll was really abused, however. I saw one lady voting 3 different times for Romney. The first time she bragged that she was voting 80 tickets. My friend Mike videoed yet another Romney supporter (or were they paid personnel of his campaign staff?) voting multiple tickets, too. I'll ask him to post this on youtube.com. So my question is this: is Romney buying the straw poll?

I think this is a lot different from having 500+ supporters show up, some of them driving hundreds of miles. There were easily 5-10 times as many Ron Paul supporters there than Romney supporters.

What good is a straw poll if it can just be bought by someone with a lot of money? What does it really show?

[Cedric]

I want my 20 dollars back...

[Ron Paul Supporter]

I want my 2,000 dollars back...

I was there and personally watched a woman recieve a stack of voting cards two inches thick and vote for Romney over and over...then she got back in line. When asked what she was doing she said, "That's how politics works" Mitt spent a ton of money to buy this straw poll. There is video to prove it. You may be able to do this here but come election day one person=one vote (unless Diebold machines are used)

Ron Paul supporters were not rude, spewing 9/11 or anything else. There was one guy dressed strange but that was it. Old people, young people, sharp dressed, casually dressed. Anyone who was there can't deny that Paul's support is diverse and passionate. What a joke this straw poll was. I hope the GOP enjoys my $20 because they won't be getting anymore. I'm a lifelong Republican and fed up with this kind of politics.

[Nick]

Ron Paul brings in a lot of young supporters who sometimes lack common courtesies and similar values. So I admit that they can become obnoxious sometimes if you aren’t already well informed of Ron Paul. That being said, I'd much rather deal with an obnoxious Ron Paul supporter exercising his free speech than the Mitt Romney supporters who cut in line ahead of me, or the couple behind me that bought 80 tickets so they could vote Mitt Romney 80 times. And then for them to boast about having the financial ability to do so which makes them better than the rest of us… I was outraged, but kept my mouth shut (there were enough other people voicing my opinion).

Apparantly most Paulistinians are new to politics. This is how straw polls work idiots.

Did they hire Diebold to count the votes?

[Dan]

OBVIOUSLY the FIX was in... Romney had a half dozen people voting in increaments of 10 to 20 times each time they were in line, while Dr. Paul supporters voted once each. By using the Diebold machines they knew who would win before the straw poll started. However, add the votes x $20 = the money received by the local RECs.

[Brad]

Today the GOP has mud on its face. When Ron Paul supporters out-numbered all others 10 to 1 at their straw poll, the polling became a free-for-all with people voting as many as 80-100 times EACH. All integrity of the straw poll vanished and the local GOP party is an embarrassment because of it.

[LaRemnant]

I saw one man have 80 Mitt Romney tickets for himself and was voting for almost an hour or so. :o(

Straw polls suck! No integrity, and Mitt Romney is a loser for having people do that for them. What a fraud.

[LaRemnant]

The atmosphere I SWEAR was as if it was a Ron Paul convention (with the singers inserting Ron Paul's name and message in their lyrics here and there), and the two RON PAUL planes AND yacht (we're planning on having golf carts and big wheels next time!), OH, and don't forget over 500 people (one four huge roadside corner gatherings) voting for him. Hell, he also had a Trolley! The rest of the Presidential candidate supporters seemed to almost be a rag tag group, scurrying at the last minute to counter our endeavor while we respectfully allowed them to set up table in the far, moldy corners of the park. Seriously. Even a pedestrian asked me if we were having a Ron Paul party. Being fair, I told him technically no, but that is not stopping us from having one... the other supporters just wished they had what we did last night. :o)

[Stacey F]

I know several people who were taking video of the handful of Romney supporters doing this. Please, post links here of the vidoes once they are on youtube.

These people have no integrity. Voting in the USA is one person ONE VOTE!

You Ron Paul supporters just don’t get it. The Rockefellers, Henry Kissinger and the rest of the Council of Foreign Relations “arranged” for Rommey to win the Straw poll. It had nothing to do with anyone voting 80 times, after all no one was stupid enough to stand there for an hour when everyone knew the machines were preprogrammed for Rommey.
There were a few reports of Ron Paul supporters voting multiple times. Like the Ron Paul supporter standing at the entrance with a stack of 100 tickets.
You may ask why some people wanted to make sure that Rommey won. Efforts to create a North American Union hinge on Giuliani being elected president (that’s why building number 7 at the World Trade Center is such a problem and no one wants to talk about it. It is the one flaw in the plan they can’t make go away).
The Deal is Rommey gets to look good as a strong challenger then he becomes either vice president or Secretary of State. The proof is in how Rudy and Rommey go out of their way to air each others dirty laundry. This is so there won’t be any last minute surprises like in 2000 with Bush’s drunk driving attest record. That almost cost us control of most of the oil in the Middle East.
This isn’t the first time this has occurred, if you check Rommey wins almost every straw poll.
By the way the Trilateral Commission doesn’t want to build an international superhighway, that’s for a pipeline to take the oil out of Mexico.
Rommey wins, Ron Paul supporters know the truth but like the people in the Men in Black movies no one wants to believe what they are actually seeing.

Ron Paul supporters are liars at worst and disingenuise at best. There were multiple Paulistinians who voted more than once. Get over yourselves. It was a straw poll, goobers! There was no "fix". If someone bought more than one ticket they got to vote more than once because they purchased that ticket. Each ticket and the corresponding vote became the PROPERTY of the ticket holder. I thought you guys were all about the constitution? No respect for property rights? The constitution is the rule book for our nation. Well, for this straw poll, the organizers set the rules for their event. All of the Ron Paul and Romney people who voted more than once did so within the rules of the event.

And there were tons of Romney people there. They just weren't as loud and obnoxious as the Paulistinians.

Get over it Paulistinians. You lost fair and square.

I'm glad they announced the results after everyone left. That pack of freaks would have probably rioted and burn down half of downtown St. Pete. What a bunch of goons.

Stacey F-

With all do respect, you are a no nothing dummy. Post as many youtube videos as you want. The fact is many people voted more than once because they were ALLOWED to by the rules of the event. This includes the many Ron Paul wackos who voted multiple times also. The Romney people didn't video your supporters because they aren't easily excitable wack jobs like you freaks.

Things I learned from Ron Paul supporters yesterday:

1) 9/11 was an inside job.

2) Reagan was "ok", but "certainly not great".

3) The American military is made up of terrorists.

4) Loud = righteous

5) When around Ron Paul supporters, one dare not exercise ones free speech right and express support for another candidate for fear of being verbally abused and/or physically intimidated.

10:57, I'm sure your telling the truth, care to post a video to backing your claims? I'm sure they threatened to beat you up too. he bottom line is the other candidates don't have the support the media claims, and the Republican party better wake up, or the Democrats will steal the show. Ron Paul will destroy any Democrat in a debate... The Democrats are scared of Ron Paul..

[Tim]

Why do people who don't support Ron Paul resort to name calling? Whose acting like goons? Also, what's with the "Collective" ideology? Blaming a certain supporter, then painting the whole campaign as the same is totally bogus. Anybody who as downtown last night knows the truth. It’s like going to a Buc’s game and blaming all the Buc’s fans because a few of them were obnoxious. Sorry, but your smear jobs aren’t working.

[Fredhead]

It doesn't matter who won the straw poll,it's just a fund raiser anyways. I was surprised how many Ron Paul supporters were downtown last night. Say what you want, but Ron Paul really has a chance to win. Sadly, Fred Thompson dosn't have a chance, he waited to long..

Just realize the following and you will sleep better tonight -

straw poll = fundraiser for the local parties

[James]

Rudy Giuliani's role in paving the NAFTA Superhighway
Posted November 29th, 2007 by Isaac Lopez
Of course, Ron Paul was the only candidate asked anything about the NAFTA Superhighway (AKA The Texas Trans-National Corridor). Sadly, the candidate on the stage who is profiting the most from this project wasn't asked a single question about it. That's probably because few people know that Rudy Giuliani is practically financing his campaign on it.

Any time you see a reporter erroneously taking Paul to task for his comments on the very real prospect of the NAFTA Superhighway, kindly point them to Manufacturing News & Technology and ask them if the $70 million dollars Giuliani received on the legal work preparing to sell public roads to foreign companies is imaginary.

Another thing you can do is send them to the website of the documentary Truth Be Tolled, to witness the passion of those fighting this thing on the front lines.

Write them and send them to these places when they attack. Ask them if they have done their homework. But why wait for them to attack? We should be peacefully preemptive. Write your local editors; Write your favorite Internet reporter; Ask them if they were aware of the referenced links. Ask them if now is not the time to have a debate about this, when will be the right time?

We need to be providing ground cover to Dr. Paul on this issue. It's the least that we can do for him as he stands up there heroically speaking truth to power.

Here are the referenced links:

Manufacturing & Technology News
Rudy Giuliani Benefits From Sale Of U.S. Highways To Foreign Companies
http://www.manufacturingnews.com/news/07/0615/art2.html

NASCO Corridor Website
http://www.nascocorridor.com/

Documentary: Truth Be Tolled
http://www.truthbetolled.com/trailer-TTC.php

[Stacey F]

Yep I'm a no nothing dummy. Not sure what that means... Did you mean know-nothing dummy? Very pathetic to resort to name calling and personally attacking me. With that said. I'm upping my next donation to Ron Paul, along with all the other people you call wackos (which makes your response even more immature).

[Doug, Tampa, FL]

So let's get this straight. Ron Paul crowd outnumbers all others (probably combined!), comes in second place (only after Romney being allowed to buy the results and have his supporters spam the ballot box), and RON PAUL DOESNT EVEN EARN A TAG IN THE ARTICLE DESCRIPTION (November 28, 2007 in Fred Thompson, John McCain, Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, Polls, Presidential campaign, Republicans, Rudy Giuliani).

Take out the cheater's votes and the other clowns listed had 109 to Ron Paul's 534 REAL votes(Giuliani 39; Huckabee 37; Thompson 21; McCain 12).

Looks like the GOP is TRYING to lose.

[Proud CFR Member]

The Ron Paul Goon Squad made it into the debate as well. I wonder which rock they crawled out from under. Many were sporting mullets and looked as if they hadn't showered in weeks.

Mitt Romney and his campaign team are class acts. It was a fun straw poll and Mitt came out on top. It is true that many Romney supporters didn't wear a sticker because of the crude and hostile tactics of the Ron Paul Goon Squad.

[george]

This is how Mit Romney won the strw poll yesterday. I was there and taped is. Ron Paul acually won. Ron Paul supports out numbers everyone else 10 to 1. SCAM. check it out yourself. there were 5 Mitt supporters that voted 30 to 50 times a piece. saw with my own eyes and camera. SCAM.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Rm-AUMJ6Ko

Oh my gosh...mullets... goons... wackos? Please! Is this high school? Guess what... America is a diverse country and so are American voters. So because I wore a Ron Paul t-shirt, jeans and flip-flops to a picnic in warm weather I look like I didn't shower?

Arrogant, plastic people turn average Americans off to the GOP. For the record I am college educated, affluent (but not an elitist), have a 6 figure household income and didn't even have a mullet in the 80's. Take your stuffy old ladies with diamond elephant pins, plastic personalities and botox smiles and get in touch with real Americans. If our dollar falls anymore you might just find yourself middle class. I am a lifelong Republican and snobs like you all make me sick.

[George]

As for CFR member. I am very well educated and I do not have a mullet. I am just awake to see what is really going on in this world. I am not crude, Hostel or a goon. You may want to look at yourself or stay controlled and close minded

I bought 10 tickets and voted for Ron Paul 10 times so I see nothing wrong with that it shows my level of passion for my candidate

If you attended the Straw poll, then you would know that support for Ron Paul CLEARLY outnumbered any of the other candidates.
Unfortunately, many individuals were buying more than one ticket/vote. That is why the results are skewed!!!
Easily, Ron Paul had %70 of the support at the vote today.
R. Paul support was and is loud, proud, and growing in numbers!

Go Here:

http://s44.photobucket.com/albums/f10/PhotoJedi/?action=view&current=MVI_3905.flv

[Mike]

Painting broad strokes of generalities about Paul supporters is far from the point of debate.
If we claim to embrace freedom, and make an effort to stick to the real points, RON PAUL, head and shoulders above the rest, is your man!

Stay passionate about your freedom!!

[Cris]

St. Petersburg straw poll votes were cast with cash

By DAVID DeCAMP, Times Staff Writer
Published November 29, 2007
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ST. PETERSBURG - Mitt Romney bought himself a victory in the straw poll for Republicans at a rain-shortened barbecue in Vinoy Park.

Romney got 893 votes, besting second-place Ron Paul's 534 - despite Paul's shuttling in supporters on a rented trolley and shuttle. The campaign had a plane sporting pro-Paul slogans and a boat touting him, too.

In fact, Paul supporters dominated the crowd, which reached an estimated 1,000 people. Tickets for votes cost $20 each.

So how did Romney do it?

"I voted 20 times," Derek Gyongzois, 38, of St. Petersburg exclaimed after casting ballots.

He said he works as a volunteer for the Romney campaign (and begged a reporter not to print his 20-vote tally). Did he buy the tickets?

"I don't have that kind of money," Gyongzois said.

He wasn't the only person voting more than once. Paul supporter Mike Wagner, 57, of St. Petersburg: "This thing is rigged."

The source to the entire story is here: http://www.sptimes.com/2007/11/29/Wo..._straw_p.shtml

As an Obama supporter, I can tell you that at least outside in Pioneer Park and across the street from Mahaffey Theater, there were two camps: us progressive patriots and the Ron Paul camps. I didn't see any person wearing a Giuliani, Romney, Hunter, Tancredo, Huckabee, McCain, Thompson or Keyes sticker or button outside. I think that covers all the pro-World War III candidates.

What about all the ron paul people who voted multiple times? Why no write up about that?

Fact is the paul people came in by land, sea, and air (literally) and lost.

[Mike]

Romney steals the attention in this case. He had like 40 people there, garnering well over 800 votes?!

Attention Ron Paul supporters. You were very impressive yesterday with a large number of supporters at the straw poll. The airplanes and the boat were great. Everyone had signs and tee shirts. You clearly had the most people present at the event. But… this is important… it’s how many votes you get that counts! You have only yourselves to blame for not winning it all. Frankly I think it tells us a lot about you and how politically naive you guys are. Any campaign that turned that many people out should have won 2 to 1

[J Bradford]

So you're saying with the number of people out supporting Ron Paul they should have won 2 - 1.

Hmmm, lets see, if Ron Paul supporters always outnumber every other candidates supporter at every event, wouldn't that make you think they might outnumber every other candidate's supporter on election day? Call me crazy, but that seems logical to me. Care to explain how he doesn't stand a chance?

You think that all of sudden Ronmney, Giuliani, Huckabee, etc... supporters are just going to show up one day and that Paul's are going to go away?

Come January 3rd, I think a lot of people are going to be surprised.

Go Ron Paul!!!

www.ronpaul2008.com

No I'm saying that with the number of Ron Paul supporters at the straw poll yesterday they should have figured out how to win the straw poll by a 2 to 1 margin. The fact that they couldn't win a pay to vote election with a lot of people in the park tells me that they don't know what they are doing. Having a crowd show up and under perform is easy.
A crowd at a straw poll doesn't translate into election day victory just ask presidents Dole and Robertson

[J Bradford]

Figure out a way to win? You mean pay more money to win? No thank you. We'll gladly let Romney get the bad press on that one.

And if you think Ron Paul is a Dole or Robertson, you are sadly mistaken.

But just remember, those "under performing" Ron Paul supporter's votes count just as much as the "pay-to-win" supporters of Mitt Romney on election day.

"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." - Gandhi

[Alex]

http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=4E92C99D61389997

"Having a crowd show up and under perform is easy."

Then how come no other candidates supporters did it?

WOW...

You guys are right. You're going to win the election. Because you had a lot of people show up at a park that means you're obviously in the lead despite what every single scientific public opinion poll says.

You are all political geniuses/professionals who know what your talking about. Congrats. You're all officially REC members.