Today the Franklin County Republican Party held the first ever straw poll of Republican presidential candidates. The event was a success, with over 400 people from all over Ohio attending and casting a ballot.
Kudos go to Rick Santorum, who was the only candidate to directly address the audience live via Skype. Herman Cain pre-recorded an address specifically to the Ohio crowd. A local candidate for Columbus city council spoke in place of Ron Paul. For the other candidates, a brief history was read live and one of their videos was played.
As is par for the course for straw polls, supporters of Ron Paul were out in full force. Their organization for swarming these types of events is legendary, and they certainly outnumbered everybody else. Sadly, at times many of them were disrespectful to the candidates’ presentations and to the other attendees. Every one of them had yard signs being handed out by the campaign, and they incessantly held them up over their heads, blocking the view of the stage and video screen for everyone else. At one point, I politely let the ones in front of us know that we couldn’t see. A couple put their signs down, yet another informed us that if we wanted to see, we should move. Um…okay. At other times, they yelled comments and even classy statements like “Bull****!” during the presentations for the other candidates. They were so rowdy, that many other attendees felt that they ruined the event. Finally, the speaker paused and reminded everyone, that as conservatives, we believe in personal responsibility, and that that included being respectful to the other candidates. Everyone not holding a Paul sign applauded and that seemed to do the trick.
Aside from that, however, the Franklin County GOP, with help from the OSU College Republicans, put on a great event. We also heard speakers regarding Issue 2 and Issue 3 (vote YES on both!), and also some information about local candidates being supported in Franklin County. Chairman Doug Preisse even mentioned Third Base Politics in his opening remarks, which we were grateful for, of course. It was a great start to what hopefully becomes a much bigger event in the future.
So, onto the results! Ron Paul was the clear winner.
Ron Paul 53.50%
Herman Cain 25.47%
Mitt Romney 8.88%
Newt Gingrich 5.37%
Rick Perry 2.80%
Jon Huntsman 2.10%
Rick Santorum .93%
Michele Bachmann .47%
Write-In .47% (1 for Mitch Daniels, 1 for Marco Rubio)
Speaking of polls, lets do another 3BP straw poll. Its been a couple of months since we last did one, and while the field hasn’t changed, we’ve had a few debates since then. We’ll keep the poll open through Sunday night, October 30.
<a href=”http://polldaddy.com/poll/5606382/”>If the GOP primary were held today, who would you vote for?</a>
