DES MOINES – Only 100 people were expected to attend GOP presidential candidate Ron Paul’s event at the Downtown Marriott Hotel Monday morning, but the room soon filled with more than 400 journalists and supporters of all ages.
With Paul’s strong showing in the influential Des Moines Register Poll, the 12-term Texas congressman attracted big crowds on the last full day of campaigning before the first-in-the-nation nominating contest, and those crowds had lots of young people.
Paul is still a front-runner along with Mitt Romney, earning 22 percent of the vote in the Register’s most recent poll, but the race is still fluid with just a few hours to go before Iowans start their caucuses.
“We’re here to see the next president of the United States,” said Kiel Moreau, 22, who drove 17 hours from Ontario, Canada.
The 76-year-old one-time Libertarian candidate has been attracting young voters throughout the year with the national Youth for Paul campaign, but in recent months, support has skyrocketed, said Jack Mescher, a Drake University freshman and regional youth coordinator for Youth for Paul. As Midwest coordinator, Mescher oversees the campaign’s Illinois, Missouri and Nebraska chapters.
In 2008, 66 percent of voters between the ages of 18 and 29 supported then U.S. Sen. Barack Obama in his presidential race, while half as many – just 31 percent – voted Republican, according to a Pew Research Poll taken after the 2008 elections.
The Youth for Paul campaign has 11 Illinois chapters, including DePaul, Loyola, University of Chicago and the recent addition of Columbia College. Mescher, who is also a precinct captain in his hometown on Sageville, Iowa, says even former Obama supporters plan to vote for Paul this time around.
“We have everyone under the sun … Libertarians, Democrats, Republicans. I guess we don’t have any Socialists – but anyone who is either conservative or unhappy with Obama or against war, we are generally very popular with,” Mescher said.
Mescher ascribes this variety of Democratic and undecided support to Paul’s stances on personal liberties and foreign policy.
“Ron Paul pursues a foreign policy that Obama definitely didn’t follow through on,” said Mescher. Paul “doesn’t accept lobby money, so he can’t be bought and sold by big companies – he works for the American people — so on that level, I think it’s very appealing to Democrats.”
Drake University political science professor Rachel Caufield has noticed more student interest in Paul than any other candidate.
“I think his supporters really see him as the anti-politician – unpolished and unrehearsed, principled in the face of opposition, and willing to stand up to the powers that be. For those voters who are cynical about ‘politics as usual,’ Paul is a breath of fresh air,” said Caufield.