The 2011 Ames Straw Poll Photo Tour, Vol. 5

Volume 1

Volume 2

Volume 3

Volume 4

My favorite thing at the FairTax tent was the custom painted motorcycle.

As the afternoon progressed, a lot of us at the Straw Poll were getting tired. While I’d paced myself because of my bad health, others were finally wilting. Even members of the news media took their chance at some downtime in the shade.

Voices of Conservative Women cleverly chalked amusing messages on the steps of the Hilton Coliseum. What a great way of advertising their tent.

While passing through AARP’s tent on different occasions, I caught parts of Bachmann’s and Pawlenty’s speeches. Tim’s was dull and Michelle’s was irritatingly obsessed with identifying herself as a native Iowan. Neither impressed.

Abe Lincoln was in the audience and probably thinking he could teach those whipper snappers something about making speeches. For some reason I wasn’t surprised finding somebody born in 1909 in the AARP tent.

One.org had a tent in the midst of the Paul tents. They are a charity mainly focused on food and medical aid to Africa. Bono of the band U2 is one of the cofounders and from his lobbying knows that conservatives give a lot to charity, so that explains their presence. They got a lot of traffic from what I witnessed.

This gave me a laugh. Pointed satire at its best.

My father thinks this was the best band out of all that played at the Straw Poll. They were pretty good.

Most of the tents in this picture are part of the Paul campaign. I met a young Mexican national who was a volunteer which surprised me. Before I could ask him about it, I was queried by another young man looking for the FairTax tent and had to direct him. Never did find out the story behind his involvement.

Strong America Now is a political group devoted to opposing increased taxes and also advocates a program to reduce wasteful spending. Their tent was very large and I didn’t explore it as much as I should have.

The first and only Gadsden flag I saw outside of a vendor. Normally something you saw at Tea Party rallies the past two years, this turned out to be an unusual sight at Ames.

A random accordion player appeared. Like the girl in the yellow shirt, I found the accordion fascinating when I was little.

As the day grew long, the lines at Santorum’s tents began to shrink and I finally could see their signup table. I was surprised at the size of his effort.

To complete the state fair atmosphere, the Bachmann camp had people swinging away trying to ring the bell.

Herman Cain’s supporters march to the coliseum for his speech.  Surprise! There’s my dad with the FairTax sign after having been drafted into the group. Turns out he got to be right in front of the podium for Cain’s excellent speech.

The last photo I took before I was too tired to continue only tells part of a story. Bachmann made a big show of going in to vote and the media swarmed to record it. Then the boos began and the Ron Paul supporters got ugly like they always do. They tried to shout her down and basically blew the good will they’d scored with me through the day. It was a classless act by them.

So ended my photo tour of the Straw Poll on a sour note. That wasn’t my intent, but that’s how things go. I’ll collate my thoughts and analysis in another post.

The 2011 Ames Straw Poll Photo Tour, Vol. 4

Volume 1

Volume 2

Volume 3

Also on the bus down to Ames were women from Voices of Conservative Women. Their tent was across the sidewalk from the FairTax tent and they were fundraising by selling kernels of corn that you could dump into a jar labeled with your favorite candidate.

Also in the tent were some other conservative women’s groups and they had very heavy traffic. This is something I would call “the Sarah Palin” effect as I’ve noticed just how many women have become involved in tea parties and politics since 2008.

Behind the Tea Party stage, the Georgians for FairTax had a small tent. It wasn’t a good location and was also hurt by the poor attendance at the Tea Party stage.

Save Our American Republic suffered the same fate. They are a 9-12 Project associated group in Iowa.

AARP had a big tent full of chairs, tables, wicker couches, and television screens of C-SPAN covering the speeches. They also had a somewhat scary inflatable Uncle Sam out front. To the ire of of one of my bus mates, the pro-Obamacare organization had a cardboard cutout of Ronald Reagan you could have your picture taken with.

You couldn’t escape the energy lobby anywhere you went. These signs were all over the walkways.

The bus the energy lobby had was next to the misting fans so popular with children. People who signed up to ride this bus in were given a tote bag of freebies including a digital camera. All they had to to do was watch a half hour presentation in return. Amazing how much money was put into this lobbying effort.

The Ron Paul tents covered a considerable area and his red shirts could be seen everywhere. They really thought they could win the poll and catapult him into the lead. Compared to four years ago, the Paulians were much better behaved.

This massive outdoor screen was erected by the energy lobby. Their efforts were on a par with any of the presidential campaigns present.

This spectacle caught the corner of my eye. While I saw more than a few Rick Perry stickers on people, the draft Sarah Palin lobby were few and far between.

Another micro-candidate I’d never heard of and I can’t remember how his name ends. The wind was a constant foe for taking pictures of banners, but a welcome friend cooling us off. It doesn’t really matter, he’s not going to be the nominee.

Here is one line for free food extending for a long distance. You can glimpse another parallel line on the right going to a different food tent. Half an hour or more was the typical wait.

Obamacare borders on being a four letter word these days. Though the recent 11th Circuit court ruling makes it more likely it will be overturned, people aren’t resting.

Anti-war and anti-taxes is what the Paul supporters are all about. And by no taxes, I mean NO taxation at all. They are much closer to being anarchists than libertarians in what they say, but the behavior is more disturbing. Glassy eyed fanatics worshiping Doctor Ron is how I’ve heard them described and I have to agree. A friend of mine remarked on how they reminded him of brown shirts in 1930’s Germany. Another four years ago made a similar comparison.

Inside the green energy lobby’s air conditioned tent there was free kettle popcorn to be had. While I di partake of that, the solar powered race car was far more interesting. Built for $150,000 it hit top speeds of over 70 mph with the potential to hit higher. It is retired and being replaced by a new smaller one to meet new government regulations.

A marching band was present in the afternoon and I have no idea who they were affiliated with. It used to be you always had marching bands at political rallies, but that is a thing of yesteryear. It was nice to see and hear them.

A small band of devoted Sarah Palin fans getting organized. They fanned out to circulate in the crowds shortly after this was taken.

Michelle Bachmann heading to the coliseum to give her candidate speech. I nearly got run over while taking this picture. Not by golf carts with security, but by photographers and video camera people from the media. I had no idea they could run so fast with heavy equipment like that outside of a war zone.

To be continued…

The 2011 Ames Straw Poll Photo Tour, Vol. 3

Volume 1

Volume 2

On the bus there was talk of Pawlenty being given a terrible location near the entrance. The moment the Famous Dave’s BBQ signs were visible any disadvantage was gone. It was a brilliant move to have them cater and it made the tents a big draw.

The lines to get in were lengthy and from what I could see were as heavily trafficked as any candidate’s tents.

Most of the candidates had big stages for bands to play music. This was a change from last time when only Romney and Huckabee did.

What, Dairy Queen too? That’s a killer one two punch of free food. Sadly for Pawlenty free food did not buy votes.

I really liked the design for the FairTax signs. They stood out amongst all the others.

It seems like quite a few organizations were giving away iPad 2’s. While I don’t know how many entered the drawing, the FairTax petition got 3000 signatures on Saturday. That was a huge success for us.

There were a lot of people at the Straw Poll and that added to the state fair feel of the occasion.

Finally found my father and his friend Ed coming out of the Cain area. I wouldn’t see them again for hours.

The Iowa Republican Soapbox was an interesting collaboration with Google to stream interviews with candidates and attendees on the Net. They also gave away an iPad 2. The videos are still up at their web site and youTube channel.

A staggering amount of people attended. At least I was staggering…

On the bus we had an activist going to protest against wind turbines due to a project up by the Twin Cities. She was hopeful we would write anti-wind power slogans on the blade. I found a whopping one and it was a call to build more nuclear plants. Alternative energy is the touchy feely fad of the moment and it is in full swing.

To be continued…

The 2011 Ames Straw Poll Photo Tour, Vol. 2

Volume 1

In the first post, I mentioned the large presence of “green” energy advocacy groups. A blade from a wind turbine was on display to be signed by attendees and was very popular. I won’t get into the financial follies of windmills generating electricity, but please note that the politicians from Iowa all made a pilgrimage to sign the blade in front of the press.

Food lines dominated the back lot. You had to cut your way through them to get anywhere. Notice all the NRA caps. Multiple times I was stopped and asked where the NRA tent was because I was wearing one.

McCotter’s area got next to no attention except for those of us who realized there were no lines to get Bomb Pops from the ice cream truck. Oh did that taste good on a sunny day!

I felt bad about the lack of traffic and support there. McCotter can be a very funny guy but not many people know him. Hardly anyone stopped by to look at his literature.

Santorum’s tents were always jumping. Having a decent band didn’t hurt at all and I was pleased to hear some covers of Buddy Holly songs.

This sign had people stopping to take pictures of it. It summed up the feelings of the crowd pretty well.

The back of the FairTax tent. I’d gotten separated from everyone from the bus very quickly and was looking for my father there. That’s the penalty for having one’s eye in the viewfinder most of the time. There was a constant flow of people through the tent.

The FairTax tent adjoined the Tea Party Patriots’ stage and associated tents. It was a nice setup that was almost completely ignored by the crowds.

I don’t know if Santorum was going for the Scottish American vote or if the bagpiper was just there. There was no smell of haggis being grilled, so that can’t be the reason he came. Though I did hear the hot dogs tasted like haggis.

A lot of families visited the FairTax tent, just like four years ago.

The media was everywhere interviewing people and chasing candidates. Little did I know I’d end up on camera twice later on in the day.

A lot of animated discussions and occasional argument over the FairTax took place. At first it looked like a bad location compared to last time, but it turned out to be a great spot.

Next door, a gospel singer failed to get much of an audience at the Tea Party stage. It was a preview of things to come as even inviting people to speak from passersby fell flat.

The police presence was widespread. I still can’t take Segway scooters seriously even if police officers are on them. How can you command respect when you look so dorky?

The media outnumbered the cops by wide margin. An amazing amount of television trucks were present.

I kept waiting for a bird or two to be roasted by the microwaves, but that never happened so I had to settle for this shot of the satellite uplink dishes.

To be continued…