Googlers stump in N.H. for Paul

Declan McCullagh / CNET News.com | January 8, 2007

MANCHESTER, N.H.--Vijay Boyapati is perched on a snowy corner of Elm Street here late Sunday night, fielding other activists' phone calls with frost-numbed fingers, and enthusiastically signaling passing motorists with Ron Paul signs.

It's a long way from the famously comfortable, stock-option-granting, lava-lamp-outfitted environment at Google, where Boyapati worked as a software engineer until quitting his job a few weeks ago to support Texas Rep. Ron Paul's campaign for president.

Boyapati, 29, says he drew on lessons learned while building Google products to create the same kind of distributed volunteer network with the goal of drawing hundreds of Paul volunteers to New Hampshire. His effort's name? Operation Live Free or Die, of course, a nod to the Granite State's thoroughly libertarian motto.

"At Google, when you think about a project, the first thing you think about is how it's going to scale. You don't build it if it won't scale," says Boyapati, a six-year veteran of the company. "It's the decentralized server model that's used at Google. It's so familiar to me it's what I used."

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The operation, an independent effort not organized by the Paul campaign, has drawn about 500 volunteers to the state in advance of Tuesday's primary, Boyapati estimates.

It works by squeezing as many volunteers as possible into about 12 homes that Boyapati has rented throughout the state, with extra people shuffled off to hotel rooms or to the homes of New Hampshire residents with a little extra room to spare. One host said in an interview Saturday that he had 15 out-of-state volunteers temporarily living in his basement.

"If you get a thousand people in a little state like New Hampshire, you can have a big impact," Boyapati says. "That impact is magnified because it's the first primary."

Googlers for Ron Paul
Boyapati isn't the only Googler who's braving New Hampshire's sub-zero winter to advance Paul's message of lowering taxes and government spending, opposing the Real ID Act, and withdrawing from Iraq immediately. Paul is the only Republican candidate for president who opposes the Iraq war and occupation.

One other former employee and five current Google engineers, who work on projects including an Asian version of Google Answers and the design of data center hardware, are staying with him in a four-bedroom group house close to Hackett Hill Road near Manchester. Boyapati says he doesn't know any Googlers who have come east to volunteer for other candidates. (After campaigning for Paul on Sunday, the crew returned home to watch V for Vendetta.)

After learning that Operation Live Free or Die volunteers were largely surviving on snack food, a local group called Ladies for Liberty volunteered to cook them meals twice a week. The rest of the time, there's a plentiful supply of potato chips, Indian takeout, and, in the refrigerator, Sam Adams beer.

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