From The Founder's Desk
columnist: Walt Thiessen

Topic: Presidential Campaign 2008
Finding Temporary Housing For 1,000 Ron Paul Volunteers

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A new effort to bring an army of volunteer labor to the Paul campaign in New Hampshire is gearing up to try to resolve as many nuts-and-bolts details as possible before the primary.

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by Walt Thiessen
(libertarian)
Tuesday, November 13, 2007

Vijay Boyapati has been employed at Google for the past five and a half years, working in particular at Google News. He has worked on article ranking, clustering of stories, the user interface, and nearly every part of the system. He says, "It’s cool hearing stories like [the Nolan Chart] where someone tries to create some original content to compete with the larger news organizations. It's what Google is really interested in, because it’s all about people creating regional news. It’s going to be hard to leave, but I can’t think of anything more important than having a chance to do something like the Ron Paul campaign."

Yes, you read that right. Boyapati is quitting his Google job to go to work full-time for no money on a political campaign that many pundits have already written off as unwinnable. Bear in mind that Google is one of the most desirable employers in America today. A Google job is highly prized, means good money, has great on-site benefits, has an ideal working environment, and so on. Why on earth would someone leave a job like that for a political campaign that most political experts believe can't be won?

Boyapati thinks it's an easy decision. Working for liberty in America is much more important. He is leaving Google to start and run the Operation Live Free Or Die project, an effort to round up 1,000 volunteers from around the country and bring them to New Hampshire to help Ron Paul have a chance to win that all-important first-in-the-nation primary. Already he has 140 on board as of right now. He says:

"We don’t know when the date is, so a lot of people haven’t been able to commit yet. There are a bunch more who say that once the date is set, they can bring some more from their meetup groups.

"I would guess that at the rate we are going, we would get to about 500 by the time of the primary. The thing that is holding us back is that New Hampshire hasn’t set their primary date. If New Hampshire sets it for the week of Christmas, it will be a disaster for us, but the word on the street is that January 8th is the most likely date; folks in New Hampshire seem to think that is the date that is most likely. Some have mentioned that it could be December 11th, but I don’t know how New Hampshire could get away with that at this point in time.

He was originally a leftist when he came to America, but that soon changed. He says, "I quickly realized that a lot of the economic ideas [on the left] didn’t work. Ayn Rand struck a very deep chord with me when I saw an old 1977 TV interview with Phil Donohue on a VHS tape."

Where did he first hear about Ron Paul? "It was in the first Republican debate for the 2008 election. I was actually quite astounded that he existed. Not him, the person. But that there was a member of Congress with a consistent libertarian philosophy. As you know, democracy encourages special interests and favor-giving. That someone could be successful without partaking in those things is remarkable indeed."

Boyapati is heading out to New Hampshire in a week or two. His first step is getting housing for himself and then for people who are going to be coming in very soon, either for short weekend stints or for full-time volunteer effort. "We have a lot of people on the East Coast who want to come up every weekend. Large furnished places for short-term rent are very difficult to find. We've got real estate agents looking for us, but the options are very limited. I’m looking to pay 20-30% above normal rent."

He told me that 10 people were on a planning conference call last night. One of them is the lead Paul meetup coordinator in New Hampshire, James Forsythe. Another participant in the call is involved in the Free State Project, which chose New Hampshire as its base a few years ago. Apparently, a lot of people from the Free State Project are interested in helping Operation Live Free or Die.

The project has had a whole bunch of offers from people living in New Hampshire who can take people into their homes in small numbers. Boyapati says they are starting a database to track the volunteers vs the housing opportunities. They plan to start a message board on the organization's website for volunteers to exchange contact information and coordinate travel plans with other volunteers and with people who have rooms to rent.

He estimates that about 20-30% of those who have already volunteered are planning to come for more than just a few days at a time. He says that part of the crew from last night's conference call are arranging buses and vans to carpool as many people in as possible from all over the country.

One of the group's major goals is to organize three massive rallies in Portsmouth, Manchester and Concord, just to get the energy up and get New Hampshire voters excited. There is so much to do for these events: hiring venues, getting sound people, arranging publicity, etc. They also plan to do more traditional campaigning: knocking on doors, handing out literature, and so on.

And what does Boyapati plan to do when all this is over? Would he reapply at Google? "I don't know, it depends where we're at," he says. "Maybe we'll be at November 2008, celebrating a Paul victory."

Who knows, indeed! Stranger things have happened.

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©2007 Walt Thiessen, all rights reserved. You must have written permission from the author in order to republish this work.
Published: Tuesday, November 13, 2007
Last modified: Tuesday, November 13, 2007

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