The group of six diehard Ron Paul supporters who launched an Internet campaign to fund their quest across the nation, following a campaign that gave them less and less aid as time went on, have had to leave the trail.
As of a couple weeks ago, the "Ron Paul Roadies" were in low spirits and often unable to afford food, having quit their jobs before the primaries to follow the Paul campaign full-time (and having stopped receiving a stipend from the Youth for Paul initiative). Even the most committed Paulites of all have to bow to certain realities.
Alexis Campestre, the 25-year-old Texan whose truck served as the group's caravan until high repair costs forced them to abandon it, pointed BuzzFeed to a blog post that explained their current situation.
"Almost all the Roadies have returned to their respective resident states to participate in the delegate process and to hopefully go to the RNC in August," the roadies write.
They did manage to raise some money, though not enough to stay on the road. "We were able to raise just over $4,000 while on the road, which paid for a lot of expenses past, as well as some current. We feel that we have begun something special, within the liberty movement, that has the potential to be even bigger," the wrote.
Going forward, the Roadies outline two plans: "Start an organization (superpac?) that can raise the funds for a liberty volunteer support system" and traveling to the Republican National Convention in August — a prospect made more daunting by the absence of Campestre's truck, which was left in Seattle. A tentative plan is in the works to retrieve the truck before Tampa.
They view their mission in historical terms, with Campestre telling BuzzFeed earlier this month that they were "kind of like the Paul Reveres of the 21st century," but the tactics have changed out of necessity: phone-banking and door-knocking have been replaced with a specific goal of making it to Tampa as delegates.
The Roadies' post also calls on Paul to make a third-party bid for the presidency.