A New Hampshire mom walks her talk for Ron Paul

The underdog presidential candidate captures support from a New Hampshire nonconformist who's been teased by the big boys, too.

By Ariel Sabar | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

from the September 6, 2007 edition

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Dover, N.H. - Before her recent leap into presidential politics, Kelly Halldorson, in bell-bottoms and Birkenstocks, would have struck most folks as little more than a slightly crunchy soccer mom. She drives a Chevy Suburban, home-schools her three children and, in free moments between her kids' ballet and hockey practice, does Pilates.

Then, in July, she watched George Stephanopoulos interview Texas Congressman Ron Paul, the maverick Republican presidential candidate. And her life changed.

"What's success for you in this campaign?" Mr. Stephanopoulos asked that Sunday on ABC's "This Week."

"Well, to win," Representative Paul said.

"That's not going to happen," Stephanopoulos shot back.

"Do you ... do you know for absolute?" Paul asked, looking a little like a deer in the headlights as he groped for a reply. "Are you willing to bet your every cent in your pocket for that?"

"Yes," said Stephanopoulos, grinning.

Recalling the exchange recently, Ms. Halldorson frowned and shook her head.

"Acch!" she says of Stephanopoulos, on an evening stroll near her home in this former mill town, a 20-minute drive northwest of Portsmouth. "The arrogance was just seeping from him. Since when did journalists become prophets?"

And so a political activist was born.

Halldorson had never so much as sunk a campaign sign on her lawn. Now she was sitting with her kids around a laptop at the kitchen table and plotting a solitary protest march through the summer heat. Her plan: walk 38 miles, in a hand-made Ron Paul Revolution T-shirt, from her home here to the steps of the state capital in Concord.

The pundits had written Paul off as a footnote to the 2008 race. She resolved to prove them wrong.

"This way, someone will listen to me," she recalled thinking. "And listen to him."

Despite single-digit poll numbers, Paul is famous for the fervency of his following, a motley group that ranges from gun lovers and tax haters to pacifists and libertarians.

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