Let this serve as fair warning for local residents: If Gerald Clift spots you idling somewhere, he's probably going to give you a pitch on Ron Paul.

As the Feb. 5 presidential primary approaches, no grocery checkout line or store aisle is safe. Professors at Sacramento State may even want to lock up their dry-erase pens.

"During finals week, as I was waiting for classes to start, I'd write stuff like 'Who Is Ron Paul?' on empty white boards," said Clift, a 20-year-old student at California State University, Sacramento. "I think it's effective. If you see it multiple times, you'll start to become more curious."

Clift is one of hundreds of local residents volunteering to support Paul, a 70-year-old Texas Republican congressman running for president by opposing the Iraq war, advocating use of the gold standard and promising an end to the Internal Revenue Service.

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Paul opposes abortion and has sought to overturn Roe v. Wade, but says states should be allowed to decide for themselves whether abortion is legal. A Libertarian presidential candidate in 1988, he has campaigned on what he believes is a strict adherence to the U.S. Constitution.

In three early competitive contests, Paul placed fifth in New Hampshire and Iowa and fourth in Michigan.

Local Paul organizers said they are running their own political efforts with little help from the national campaign. Like Paul backers elsewhere, Sacramento-area voters have formed Internet-based "meetup" groups using the Web site Meetup.com to plan activities such as knocking on doors and waving homemade banners from overpasses.

Warren Frost, 23, another student at Sacramento State, runs the area's largest Ron Paul meetup, with 431 members as of Friday. He described himself as a lifelong Republican who said "for once we have a candidate who lives up to that (party) name."

Frost said he likes Paul's isolationist beliefs and welcomes a retrenchment of the American military throughout the world, which he said is weighing down the U.S. economy.

"I regret it now, but I voted for George W. Bush in 2004," Frost said. "At every given opportunity, he has chosen to expand the size and scope of government. If it weren't for Ron Paul running, I probably wouldn't be voting at all because I'm so disillusioned."

Drivers have likely seen signs such as one near a freeway onramp in midtown Sacramento that says to "Google Ron Paul," or another one in Fair Oaks that declares the impending "Ron Paul Revolution." The displays say nothing about Paul's beliefs and may seem cryptic to those unfamiliar with the congressman.

"That's to create interest, hoping that other people will see the signs and want to check it out online," Frost said.

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