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THE SKY, Dec. 20—We’re hovering 1,500 feet above Baltimore in a 200-foot blimp with Ron Paul’s name on it, and I’ve lost feeling in my hands. Elijah Lynn, vice president of the Ron Paul Blimp, passes around heat packets, the kind made for skiers. “Shake it,” he says. Over the past week, temperatures in the blimp have dropped to as low as 28 degrees. As the crew has learned, it’s hard out here for a blimp.
The Ron Paul Blimp launched last week in Elizabeth City, N.C,. and has since moved through Columbia, S.C., Richmond, Va., and now Baltimore, taking days off for bad weather. (You can track the blimp’s path via GPS here.) Anyone craning their neck blimpward sees one of two messages: “Who Is Ron Paul?” (an homage to Ayn Rand’s “Who is John Galt?”) or “Ron Paul Revolution,” with the “evol” highlighted as a backwards “love.” The guys behind the blimp now spend every day inside it, giving interviews by phone, taking turns flying (“It’s like driving a boat”), blogging the voyage using the blimp’s wireless connection, and planning the blimp’s schedule.
Of course, the “schedule” is a joke. They had originally planned to head to Iowa for the Jan. 3 caucuses. Now, they’re going south after circling New York City instead. Likewise, our flight was at first supposed to take off at 8 a.m. That time was changed last minute to 12:30 p.m. But when we arrived at the Harford Airport at noon, the airship had already left. We ended up taking the next flight. “You can’t keep to a tight schedule,” said one of the organizers. Daniel Hornal, the official “blimpographer,” agreed: “You’re on blimp time now.”
The blimp springs from the same imaginative well as the Ron Paul “money bombs,” which have raised more than $10 million and put Paul among the Republicans' top likely fourth-quarter fund-raisers. The project is being paid for through online donations. They’re currently just shy of $280,000, which should keep the blimp aloft through Christmas. (All told, the blimp operation costs about $350,000 a month.) Trevor Lyman, the public face of the Nov. 5 and Dec. 12 money bombs (“That wasn’t my idea,” he says) and the Ron Paul Blimp (“That was”), says he thinks they’ll raise enough money to fly through Super Tuesday.
There’s something perfectly Paulian about the blimp. It’s a stunt, in the best sense of the term—big, memorable, and utterly silly—a lot like Ron Paul’s candidacy itself, at least in the eyes of outsiders. The project isn’t affiliated with the Paul campaign—FEC regulations forbid collaboration—but it does try to preserve the spirit. “We see what they’re doing, and we try to fit their image,” Hornal says.
Some of the guys behind the blimp are relatively recent Paul converts. Hornal says he wasn’t a big Ron Paul fan before getting involved. If anything, he’s for Kucinich.* He figures that libertarianism should apply to some areas—trimming the Education Department, say, or fiscal policy—but not to others, like health care. Lynn is also new to the party: eight weeks ago, he hadn’t even heard of Ron Paul. He calls himself a “political virgin” and says he doesn’t give speeches about Paul: “I just tell people, go watch the videos.”
Some acolytes see Ron Paul as the heir to Howard Dean, tactically if not ideologically. Like Deaniacs, Paulites (or, if you prefer, -tards) organize “meetups,” where they can hang out and chat with like-minded politicos. Dean fans also pledged online. But Paul’s clan has advanced the ball. Ideas like the money bomb and the blimp get floated on various Ron Paul forums, where they’re alternately nurtured, rejected, developed, and finally acted upon. That’s why it’s hard for one person to take all the credit. The clown car is bigger than ever, but no one person is steering.
Another aspect of the movement’s Web-based strategy is documentation. Let me rephrase that: overdocumentation. Today, every moment—every conversation, every quip, every striking vista—is being recorded. Everyone has a camera pointed at everyone else. It’s like the last scene from Reservoir Dogs, but with photographers. After three minutes chatting with the blimpographer about his political views, I realize he’s had his camera pointed at me from his lap the entire time.
After Baltimore, we head back to the airfield in Harford. Washington, D.C. is out of the question. Post-9/11, FAA regulations restrict unauthorized aircraft from flying within 15 miles from the White House. They might try to get special permission for the blimp, but so far no luck. I ask Hornal if Ron Paul would abolish airspace restrictions. “Probably in his second year,” he says.
Check back next week for a blimp video on Slate V.
* Clarification: This article overstated Hornal's support for Dennis Kucinich. Hornal wrote in to clear this up: "I have not decided to support Kucinich's run for president. ... I am, however, philosophically close to Kucinich on some issues, like the war and health care."
UPDATE 2:00 p.m., Dec. 26: Photo by Christopher Beam.
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Attention Washington, D.C., residents! The Ron Paul Blimp will be passing by the district between 3:30 and 4 p.m. today. It's hard to say where you'll be able to see it, though, since the blimp can't legally fly within 15 miles of the White House. From the blimpsters' press release:
We would like to assure the public that the blimp is not a threat to national security, only to other republican presidential candidates.
The blimp will be spending tonight in Harford, MD, just north of Baltimore, after which it will probably be heading up toward New York City, according to blimp spokesman Bryce Henderson. Donations to the blimp are currently around $260,000, which should be enough to keep the zeppelin aloft through Christmas. They've scuttled plans to visit the Iowa caucus—the blimp is "very sensitive to weather," Henderson says—so it will likely be heading south to Florida and Atlanta in the coming weeks.
You can track the blimp's whereabouts via GPS here.
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Some presidential candidates make stickers. Those are fun. Some make posters. I guess those work, too. But some—or rather, one—have giant freaking blimps flying around with their names on them.
If you haven’t seen the Ron Paul blimp passing overhead lately, that’s because the launch was delayed. The blimp was supposed to take off today, but the banners that get stuck to the side of the blimp haven’t arrived yet, according to blimp coordinator Bryce Henderson. “[A] blimp with no message on it simply does not have the same effect,” Henderson wrote in an e-mail.
The blimp tour is organized by an ad-hoc group calling itself, well, Ron Paul Blimp, and it’s financed by contributions on its Web site. The more money donated, the longer the blimp stays aloft. They’re up to about $234,000 as of Wednesday, which should keep the blimp airborne through Dec. 24, according to Henderson. But there’s no definite end date—if people keep giving, the blimp keeps going. Henderson says the blimp will probably fly over Iowa during the Jan. 3 caucuses, and there’s a tentative schedule to keep it floating through the Feb. 5 primaries, cash willing.
The blimp project is a lot like Ron Paul’s October “money bomb” in that it’s organized entirely by supporters. But as a fund-raising gimmick, it’s fairly useless. Campaign finance laws prevent Ron Paul Blimp from coordinating with the campaign, so the money they collect can’t go toward ground organization. Instead, donors are paying for pure, unalloyed publicity: The value a thousand heads turning upward and saying, “Holy crap, it’s a Ron Paul blimp.” And unlike the October “money bomb,” there’s something in it for donors. Anyone who gives $5,000 to the blimp gets to ride in it. (About a dozen people have so far.)
The genius of the stunt—other than the potential for exposure—is its utter silliness. “A blimp?” you say. “Who does that?” But it works because no one takes Ron Paul all that seriously in the first place. Somehow a Hillary Blimp or a John Edwards Blimp wouldn’t quite work. But a Ron Paul Blimp—now that just makes sense.