Ron Paul has caught the attention of many

Dennis Lee of Selah had never really been involved in presidential politics before. For that matter, neither had Gordon Althauser of Ellensburg or Royal Schoen of Yakima.

But they're involved now. They're giving their time and money to Ron Paul, a maverick Republican congressman from Texas who won support from just 5 percent of respondents in a recent Gallup Poll matchup with other GOP candidates.

But passionate support from them and other Yakima Valley residents has created more local visibility for Paul's campaign than for some more mainstream candidates.

Paul is a guy they'd never heard of a year ago, and who is given no chance of winning by any mainstream political commentators. He's an obstetrician-
gynecologist who wants to get U.S. troops out of Iraq right away, abolish the Internal Revenue Service, eliminate the U.S. Department of Education and return to the long-gone gold standard.

His local supporters recognize and freely acknowledge that some of Paul's positions are far from the political center. They know that their man, who began his third and most-recent stint as a congressman in 1997, doesn't appeal to mainstream Republicans or Democrats.

"That is exactly what I like about him," said Lee, a 45-year-old refrigeration service worker from Selah. "I can honestly tell you that I love this guy."

Lee is not alone. Driven by Internet "meetup" groups, bloggers and grass-roots activists, Rep. Paul's campaign has become one of the more visible locally and around the country, certainly among the so-called second-tier candidates.

There are Ron Paul signs on Yakima street corners and Ron Paul magnets on cars. Once a week, his supporters stand on Yakima sidewalks holding Ron Paul banners. Two dozen people have joined the Yakima Ron Paul group at meetup.com, and they've met 11 times already as of Friday. The Ellensburg Ron Paul group has 16 members and has met three times.

Paul's surging popularity nationwide over the past few months is the latest example of the "netroots" phenomenon, by which grass-roots campaigns are waged online not by the candidate but by fervent supporters in the blogosphere. The Internet allows people to build a coalition in cyberspace and raise money in ways they couldn't a decade ago, said David Domke, a University of Washington professor and Democratic campaign consultant who studies political communication.

Paul, with about $10.3 million raised so far, is still far behind the $63 million raised by former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney through October, or the $47 million raised by former New York Mayor Rudy Guiliani.

But in a move that caught the attention of political insiders, on Nov. 5 Paul's online backers organized a one-day donation blitz of $4.2 million, a one-day high for all 2008 presidential candidates.