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Trevor Lyman

Trevor Lyman is the president of Ron Paul Blimp, a for-profit corporation selling sponsorship of a pro-Ron Paul blimp flying around the nation. As a supporter of the Republican congressman’s campaign, Lyman also has been a principal organizer of online “money bomb” fundraising efforts for Paul’s presidential campaign.

Josh Israel interviewed Lyman on January 3, 2007.

I was able to piece together that you were born somewhere in the Northeast.

I wasn’t born there but I lived there since about age 11, right around then.

Where in the Northeast?

Acton, Massachusetts.

Did you go to school in New England, too?

I went to high school in New Hampshire. We moved about sophomore year. I did some college at the University of New Hampshire.

So you were sort of surrounded by the whole political universe?

When I was younger, from ages 5 to 11, I grew up right near D.C. — Alexandria and Falls Church, [Virginia]. My grandfather always would ask my opinions.

That’s a dangerous thing.

It didn’t matter that I was young, or whether I was right or wrong; he just wanted me to get in the habit of forming an opinion. He would always ask me things like, “What do you think of nuclear power?” Here I am eight years old. He took me to see all the monuments and all the museums. I would say D.C. probably had the largest influence, but certainly the other two states are political as well, absolutely.

Were you in New Hampshire during any of the primaries?

Sure. I wasn’t involved in any way, but I lived in New Hampshire on and off for 10 years, certainly through high school and beyond that.

I gather you weren’t doing politics after college. You did music some bit?

I didn’t start that until a few years ago, but I was always trying to do something with music, sure, different bands and things like that.

Were you a musician yourself or just a fan?

A musician. I always was trying to do some promotional thing, trying to start my own print paper about musicians. At one point I started a small pirate radio station in Boston, which eventually did get shut down. I got a visit from the guy from the FCC, [saying] not to do it again or I’ll get $20,000 in fines, if not more.

Was that what motivated you to get involved in politics?

No, still not yet. It wasn’t until really the [Iraq] war. Certainly that bothered me. I didn’t really understand why. What I did for the pirate station was I started a station that played local musicians, local to Boston and pretty much Massachusetts. I played all styles of music. It just showcased local talent. I think every city should have a station like that. It can be low on the dial or whatever. I don’t see why local art can’t have one spot on the entire spectrum where it’s allowed to be heard. Sure, I didn’t understand that. I didn’t like the way things were set up, but it wasn’t really until the war that I got really thinking about what was going on.

I imagine there was some point where you felt that you wanted to get involved. How did you go from someone upset about what was going on to someone very much involved in trying to change it?

I basically started learning a lot, getting into the war. What happens with that is, for some of us, we take it more seriously than others. For me, war is never a good thing. It might be a necessity. At times, it’s certainly a self-defense, but other than that it’s pretty hard to justify. I needed to know if my tax dollars are going toward funding what’s happening. I needed to know if it’s just. I definitely looked. When I would investigate, I’d find out that things weren’t sold on the up and up. They weren’t always actually as they were presented.

For example, as far back as the first Gulf War against Saddam, Saddam sat on the border of Kuwait masking troops and the United States issued a statement saying that we had no security interests in Kuwait, which was essentially a green light. That’s not that the United States caused the war, it’s the United States saying, “go ahead and invade.” It’s the United States looking at tanks and troops building up on a border for no particular reason and then deciding to make a statement that if something were to happen from any country out there, who knows who, we won’t do anything about it. Of course, we did the exact opposite.

So I just started learning things like that and just realizing there were other forces in play other than just going in and being the good guy. So after I started to learn more about that, I really became against this war. The Democrats promised that we would get out. That was what their platform was they ran on in 2006. As soon as we voted them in, suddenly they said we voted for a change in strategy, which was not the case. It was very disappointing. At that point I felt the voice of the people isn’t being done; the will of the people isn’t served; the system is in trouble. That just made me look harder. You notice that information is getting out on the Internet and I was into Internet promotions, so I sort of was understanding of how that happened and that it was powerful.

Through the Internet I found Dr. [Ron] Paul. I found his positions. I found that he was against the war all this time. I learned about why, just to understand why more. I also saw that he was consistent and he always did what he said. So coming off of a sort of betrayal from the Democrats, and then doing another, because we had a surge, not a reduction. I felt there was somebody who agrees with my stance and can be trusted.

You saw him, you learned about him, and you were excited by him. How did you start to get involved from there?

First I ran two different blogs. One was just a blog that was just sort of trying to talk about whatever I found interesting about him. There were a lot of other blogs doing that, so that sort of fell by the wayside. I replaced that with another website called RonPaulMeetUpVideos.com, which was sort of my first success in getting a site that got a fair amount of traffic. I just sort of looked on YouTube for videos that people were making of themselves doing sign wavings and putting signs and all the different interesting things people were doing to try to promote Ron Paul. A lot of these videos would be sites.

I would find them and place them as a blog and categorize them. This one is from Massachusetts, this one is from New York, this one is from California. You could go to the site now and still see it. I stopped at November because things became too busy in other areas that were having more impact. There’s a whole history of activity of Ron Paul supporters documented there, or organized at least in some way. That was one of the things that I was doing.

Probably a great historical record as well.

I could always fill in the gaps. It’s all there. You just have to search for it and organize it.

What other sorts of ideas did you try?

It was actually after the MeetUpVideo blog. That was what got me looking for Ron Paul videos on a daily basis. I’d go and search and sort the results that came up first. That’s when I found this video that was made by a gentleman named James Sugra, who lives out in Huntington Beach, California. He made this video that had the idea of 100,000 people coming together to donate $100 each on a single day for a $10 million day. I liked that idea and I took that video and I linked to it in the forums and people really, really responded well.

So after a short time, people were asking for someone to make a website. People were saying we needed a website, over and over, and different people agreed. No one was stepping up to it so I said I’d do it. When that happened, I bought the domain ThisNovember5th.com and set it up so that people could subscribe via a service called FeedBurner, [by entering] an e-mail address. Through it I could send an e-mail every day saying how many people had subscribed. If you subscribed, it meant that you were promising, pledging to give $100 at RonPaul2008.com on November 5. I would just basically report a count. “Today we have 1,000,” or 2,000, and so on.

What ended up happening was people pitched in graphics for the site, they pitched in banners, graphic banners, linking banners. People took those banners and made a Flash countdown clock. Once I had all the pieces together, some I made, some other people pitched in, then Ron Paul supporters took those banners and they spread them all over the Internet, in blogs, personal MySpace profiles. That right there was the real reason that this whole money bomb type of thing worked. The network of “tell your friend to tell their friend to tell their friend” is so active. It just propagated very quickly. That network made this happen. That’s why I always say it’s a major group effort. It’s not any one person pulling the strings.

Sounds like the traditional idea of grassroots activism but not necessarily in a way that’s historically the way it’s been done.

The process is just sped up. It’s probably the exact same thing; it’s just that it’s really fast because of how much faster and easier Internet communication is. I couldn’t imagine this necessarily even happening at all if people had to manually write out 10 letters to their friends and to get information out.

And getting them to actually write out checks and mail them?

They’re all inspired by the messages. So when people say, “Let’s all donate together on this day,” the Internet provides that ability as well. It is grassroots, but it’s much faster and it’s much more powerful.

And it was $4.3 million [raised online on November 5]? Is that right?

That’s right.

About how many people?

I think it was around 30,000. I think about 20,000 were first-time donors, somewhere in that vicinity. I think maybe 32,000.

What do you think was the reaction? The national pundits had sort of not perceived Dr. Paul as necessarily being as strong a contender, and then suddenly $4.3 million come in. What do you think that did to his candidacy?

All of these things grow slowly out of the situation. Every situation creates a reaction. The situation was that he wasn’t getting much media; as you just said, they didn’t think that he would have a candidacy. We went from raising $600,000 the first quarter, $2.-something million the second. We got a little bit of press for that, which motivated people to $5.3 million the quarter after that. We got quite a bit of press for that. The whole November [effort] was coming up soon after that. That was why this idea worked.

People were like, “Wait a second — if we can all donate together,” and he got a lot of press from $5.3 million, “imagine if we could do the same thing in one day. Imagine if we can do more. We can finally give him press.” That was really the core motivation why people wanted to do this. It really just might not make sense otherwise. We planned for this media reaction. This was the ulterior motive of the people in response to the fact that they wouldn’t take us seriously. We were ready for that. We were prepared for that and hopeful for it, and grateful for it.

Unfortunately it costs a whole lot of money to get a message out, but what do I think it did for his candidacy? I think it absolutely gave him a shot of credibility that he needed. You have these people, their yardstick is all wrong, but it is what it is. That’s the way it’s been. So we play by their rules, playing their game the best that we can. In our eyes, he’s always been credible. He supports the Constitution. Someone who does that ought to be taken seriously. When we look at ways in which we’ve strayed from it and that our country was supposedly founded upon it, it’s a little disheartening to see that people don’t take him seriously anymore.

People look at money as the indication of how serious a candidacy is.

I understand that. They need something to go off of. Do people care about the Constitution? Do we really have the right to say that just because we think they should they do, if that’s what the poll says? Maybe they’re shocked just as well to find out that the poll systems err. A lot of unconstitutional programs that go on, some people are coming together in fact that they don’t want that anymore.

How did you end up moving from this to the blimp concept?

The blimp was also another outgrowth or idea spawned by the fact that [Paul’s campaign] was not getting any attention. I was just sort of thinking about — this was back in the $2 million quarter — how he might be able to get some media. When you find somebody who you really think is great for the job and has a great record and is against the war — is the only one against the war, coming off of people who said they were and then weren’t — you want that war to end and we still do. We’re very frustrated with it. Last year was the most violent year in the history of it for our troops. So we’re like: “Why can’t this guy be heard? His record should put him there, not just whether or not he has money.”

The blimp was a reaction to that problem. What could they not ignore? Even if the media won’t cover him, what can we do to get past the media? What’s as big as the media, or at least close to it, or as close as we can get? So that’s where the blimp idea came from. It was a while ago that the blimp idea came about. It sort of went by the wayside because it was a little premature in terms of funding it. It was just too expensive. After the $4.3 million day, and just before the December 16 day, another gentleman by the name of Elijah Lynn sort of rekindled the idea on the forums and [got] excited about it again. Now it seemed much more doable because we had some more fundraising ability. That’s how that got started.

We’re actually going to be, coincidentally, talking with Bradley Smith [outside legal counsel for Ron Paul Blimp] tomorrow afternoon. I’m sure he, more than anyone else in the country, perhaps, can explain all the legalities. Sort of in a general sense, can you talk about how the Ron Paul Blimp organization is set up? You’re not affiliated with the campaign. Is that correct?

That’s correct.

Just give us a general sense of what you are, I guess.

We’re set up as an LLC, a for-profit business, an advertising agency. Basically, the way I understand — and you’re right, I’m not a lawyer, so I wouldn’t want to be held to this — is that we’re like, if you were to walk into a store and it only sold T-shirts with Ron Paul on them, we would be operating like that. There’s a message and you can buy it, if you like. There would be no problem with a store existing like that. It could have just Ron Paul T-shirts, all different shapes and sizes if they wanted to. Or just one T-shirt and they can have 1,000 of them. You just pick the one that fits you and you go. It’s sort of like that.

To further explain it, the billboard — because that’s what a blimp is, it’s really just a flying billboard — basically sells time increments. You’re buying your ad time. Instead of a T-shirt, you’re buying a slice of time on this blimp. If you buy 10 minutes worth and somebody else buys an hour and somebody else buys 20 minutes, etc., I’ll buy it and when my 10 minutes are up, the next person’s purchase begins until their time is up, and then the next person’s purchase begins, etc.

So as a renter, for that 10-minute period, you’re choosing your message as, “Google Ron Paul.” Is that what it says?

It says, “Who is Ron Paul?” in big letters. Then on each side it says, “Google Ron Paul.” It sort of asks the question and gives the solution, or a way to answer it. On the other side it has the Ron Paul Revolution logo.

I don’t know if you have any sense of how many people actually have Googled Ron Paul specifically after seeing the blimp, but I gather it’s gotten a fair amount of media attention and sort of word of mouth as something new.

I know the two things that I think are fairly accurate. One is that when we get these media reports from a volunteer, somebody who’s out there helping out who has access to it, there’s some software that will basically grab all the stories out there off the Internet and tell you how many you’re in. It calculates the value of those stories by saying a front page ad would be worth this much, so this story is worth this much, that type of thing. It would tell us so far that this blimp has received over [$500,000], and it’s probably getting close to $600,000, worth of publicity since its launch date, so it more than paid for itself already. We still have another 16 or so days to go. That’s one aspect.

As far as how is it doing for us, hopefully it’ll do $1.25 million for us by the end of the month. Then another thing that we’ve seen is a story in a paper that said soon after the blimp and another venture out there — not venture in terms of profit but just effort — Ron Paul Riders is a guy who rode his bike, I think from California all the way out to Virginia in support of Ron Paul, to draw attention to his candidacy. At any rate, they said once the blimp and Ron Paul Riders went through Columbia, South Carolina, Ron Paul signs started to appear on lawns, so that’s a great sign.

Do you think this model could be replicated in future campaigns as a way of going above the traditional fundraising and media system? Or do you think it’s sort of unique to the sort of campaign this is?

Yes and no. If they expect the people to fund it and if there’s somebody out there who has a lot of motivated supporters, someone who is inspiring, then yes, I believe it will be able to do the same in the future. With the “money bomb” situation, other candidates have tried to duplicate that effort and they’ve failed miserably. It’s probably because it’s an Internet-based phenomenon and they don’t have much support on the Internet comparatively. You can go to Meetup.com and you can notice the next best presidential candidate is Barack Obama. I think they have 7,000 local team members where Ron Paul has close to 90,000, I think.

A lot of the grassroots support, the use of meet-ups, the supporters driving fundraising, and getting a lot of first-time donors was very much the hallmark of Howard Dean’s campaign in 2004, which also was driven in large part by people who were against the war. Was any of this sort of modeled on catching lightning in a bottle the same way?

No, because I was completely unfamiliar with it. If it did have a similarity, I think it was just something that maybe grows out of the way that the Internet operates. If you’re going to do it right, I guess that’s the way to do it. I didn’t know about it.

Why do you think so many of the other candidates haven’t been able to build this level of online support, other than that their ideas are different? Do you think it’s that they haven’t been trying enough or it just doesn’t generate the excitement?

I think that the media bases their assumption of support on money, like we were talking about earlier, rather than people on the ground. They see that they have these dinners where people make the largest contribution possible, but in the end you’re talking about a smaller number of people who can donate quite a bit of money. So it’s not really reflecting true popularity. The Internet is more of a people’s medium. They’re two different animals, I guess. I think that their message is less appealing to the common person.

Another aspect about the Internet is that everything is documented. You can go and watch videos and people will link videos comparing if you’re going to say two different things in two different days or even two different minutes on the same stage. Somebody’s going to link a video about that and they’re going to show you how in one speech, for example, Hillary Clinton, I think she espoused three different viewpoints on one topic that were all as opposite as they could be. That kind of thing people catch and they can have access to on the Internet.

It’s a lot easier to get away with having multiple opinions back in the days when no one was watching speakers more than once.

Exactly. Now it’s all documented. You can go back and look again. It’s a different thing. It’s a better situation because it lends itself more to the truth.

I know that independent groups, there are restrictions on how much you can coordinate with the campaigns and so forth. Have you gotten any sort of sense what the reaction of the congressman has been to this grassroots influx of money and attention?

I think he’s pretty happy. I think there’s a danger in having other people carry the message for you in that it’s not always going to be represented exactly as you would. I think that hasn’t been too much of a problem. If I were to say any objection to it, that would be it, that we decide how things are presented and we decide what’s next, what the date is, when the money will come. Many things they would like more control of because they might say, “We need money at this point and that point.” We may not know these things so we might mess up a little bit of that. In the end, they know and we know that by doing this together, by coming up with the ideas on our own, we just start doing much more than we ever would do without that type of coordination. I think the pros outweigh the cons.

One of the criticisms — dating back to the 1800s — of having a lot of money in presidential campaigns is that money buys access and money buys influence. I wonder if you think sort of this new model of significant grassroots support, small dollar donors online, is sort of changing that.

I think so. That’s the point. You’re right. It is a criticism and the voice of criticism is getting louder. The creature that’s created by that, the money machine is getting a little bit more frivolous and out of control. We’ve seen that cycle before with Vietnam and people had to come and put that to bed. It’s a different thing, though. We’re in different times but we have a different weapon. Back then people were more allowed to have rallies. There are a lot of elements out there that really kind of destroy some of the same tools that people used to fight back against the war. There isn’t any protest music. Anti-war rallies largely go unreported in the media. There are lots of other things going on: “freedom of speech zones” and larger police presence.

I’ve seen an example, I think it was in Oregon, where certain members of some anarchy party were allowed to go around bashing through a city for hours and hours. Then the police came in with violence saying that everybody was there for violence, really destroying peaceable protest. Now, instead of those things that we usually do, now we have the Internet, which is allowing us to manipulate them in a different way. When I say “them,” I don’t really know what I mean by that other than war makes people a lot of money. Just as with Vietnam, they wanted that war to continue. “They,” whoever that is, just a natural collection of people that want to make money, is in place today. It seems to be a new type of animal. We have a new way of fighting back.

You went from having an Internet company to doing this full time, I gather?

That’s right.

How are you able to eat?

By losing money. I stopped taking salary and I have been selling off shares of my company, but not a large amount. Yeah, basically just giving everything up.

Hopefully the election is coming up soon enough that you’ll be able to [get by]?

Yeah, but I think right now is just the time to do the right thing, to focus on and to do what’s sort of the responsibility, I guess you would say that’s fallen into my lap, or however you want to put it. But just to pay homage to that and to stick with that. Then from that point before and after the elections, through this round of what goes on with the primaries. There will be opportunity after that where I can take more of a thoughtful approach about, “How am I going to do this and sustain myself while doing it?”

Already ideas are coming up. I think that will be possible. I don’t believe this will end with this presidential election campaign. Regardless of the outcome, I know that the people who believe in this, they support Dr. Ron Paul, but they are in it for the Constitution and for the principles of this nation. So they’re not just going to stop. We’re going to go to Congress and support congressional runs, House, Senate, governor.