Posted on 10/03/2012 1:20:35 PM PDT by Rural_Michigan
BYRON CENTER, MI — Jolene Helms, standing in pajamas and a sweatshirt, was all smiles early Wednesday morning as she filled up her car for $1.84 a gallon.
Helms, a 20-year-old from Grand Rapids, rose early with a friend to fill up at the Marathon station at 8391 Byron Center Ave. SW, where the jaw-dropping price was being offered as part of a political stunt highlighting President Barack “Obama’s Failing Agenda.”
“I was floored,” Helms said as a volunteer for the anti-Obama group Americans for Prosperity, pumped her gas. “I called my boyfriend and said, ‘I got 10 gallons for $19.’ He said, ‘No way!’”
Helms, who joyously said she cannot remember the last time gas was below $2 a gallon, was one of hundreds of motorists who packed the at-times chaotic Marathon station to take advantage of the price, which switched over from $3.79 just after 7 a.m.
Annie Patnaude, deputy state director for Americans for Prosperity of Michigan, which subsidized the price difference, said the group pumped 1,000 gallons of gas in the first hour and 2,100 in the second.
In all, Patnaude said she estimates the group will pump gas for 300 motorists before wrapping up, with more than 3,600 gallons expected to be dispensed.
At $1.84 a gallon, those estimates mean the group is expected to spend more than $7,000 subsidizing motorists' gas.
Patnaude said she expected the promotion to go on until at least 10:30 a.m., and said by 9:20 a.m. cars were lined up for a mile.
Organizers said the group pumped gas for about 250 vehicles at a similar event Monday in Mt. Morris Township, outside Flint.
Vehicles flooded the station’s lot, and passing motorists not in line craned their necks and pointed in awe at the LED bearing a price unseen in years.
Politics aside, “I was ecstatic,” Helms said.
Scott Hagerstrom, statewide director of Michigan’s Americans for Prosperity chapter, said the price was chosen because gas was going for $1.84 a gallon when Obama took office.
Sitting in a massive RV in the station’s parking lot, which had giant pictures of Obama emblazoned on its side and a list of “failed agenda” items, Hagerstrom said the group wanted to highlight its own agenda with the event.
“We want to remind people that this is not the new normal,” Hagerstrom said, “this is not reality, we don’t have to accept this reality, that we can get back to lower unemployment rates, we can get back to lower gas prices.”
Hagerstrom was critical of, among other things, Obama’s decision to reject plans for the contentious Keystone XL pipeline that would have run through the central United States between Canada and the Gulf of Mexico.
Critics of that decision, including Hagerstrom, argued increased supply from the pipeline and other drilling proposals rejected by Obama would have driven down gas prices substantially.
Those claims have been disputed by others. A Bloomberg news report in February this year said the pipeline actually could have raised prices by 20 cents in the Midwest, Great Plains and Rocky Mountain states.
Still, the group’s political message resonated with Marathon station owner Rodney Brush, who stood off to the side watching as motorists crammed his lot.
“I was born and raised here in West Michigan,” Brush said, “and I just finally have kind of had enough of the direction that things are going” in the country.
Brush said his business has been hit hard by both the economy and rising gas prices.
The station’s front door sports a political sticker for former congressman Pete Hoekstra, who’s running to unseat incumbent Democratic U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow.
Brush said the event helped raise awareness of issues important in the upcoming election, no matter one's political persuasion.
Gas for “$1.84 a gallon isn’t our answer to the whole big picture,” Brush said, “but it’s just one thing in the whole economics of it. And as a business owner, it’s obviously been very, very tough.”
Zane McMillin may be reached through email and Twitter.
Now, this is a creative way to highlight Obama’s war on gasoline. Cheaper than buying ads for the publicity. This would be worth doing in all Battleground States.
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