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SACRAMENTO - Republican presidential candidate and Texas Rep. Ron Paul is this year's version of Howard

At least $750,000 of Paul's campaign cash has come from Californians, including $26,600 from the Central Valley and the Mother Lode. And this is probably just a slice of Paul's haul: On Nov. 5, Paul supporters broke the single-day fundraising record by collecting roughly $4.2 million over the Internet.

The choice of day for the fundraiser - the 402nd anniversary of English Catholic Guy Fawkes' attempt to blow up the Protestant Parliament - says much about Paul's appeal.

His political views are an intellectual carpet-bombing of the Washington establishment: Paul wants to get rid of the federal Education Department, return abortion decisions to the states, return U.S. monetary policy to something like the gold standard, abolish the Internal Revenue Service and, most importantly to his supporters, immediately begin withdrawal of troops from Iraq. Paul is a confirmed isolationist.

Stockton's Betty Amrine likes the whole package. Amrine leads the Stockton-area "Meetup" group for Paul, a small group of Paulistas who are doing their thing to help the 72-year-old Texan win California's GOP primary Feb. 5.

"The American people are starved for someone who is honest and who makes fiscal sense," said Amrine, who as a Mormon added that she had initially leaned toward fellow Mormon and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney. But then she learned that Romney had once supported gay rights and abortion rights.

"I think he denied his actual feelings," Amrine said of Romney. "You've got to have sold some of your beliefs down the river to go for that."

As for the war in Iraq, Amrine joins the majority of Americans who want the U.S. to leave soon. She said she voted for President Bush, but is deeply disappointed with him now. "I am not happy to be a Republican now," she said.

Paul is only garnering about 4 percent in California polls these days and has never scored better than 6 percent in any national survey, according to the tracking site RealClearPolitics.com.

Amrine says she is busily spreading Ron Paul signs around the Stockton area and offering party registration cards to all the Democrats, Libertarians and unaffiliated voters who support Paul; they all must change their party registration if they want to vote for him in February.

Indeed, no one but registered Republicans can cast a ballot for Paul on Feb. 5. And if Paul's financial supporters are any indication, that is a problem.

A Record analysis of Paul's campaign finance reports and state voting records shows that nearly half of Paul's California supporters are not Republicans; in the Central Valley, 68 percent of his donors were not Republicans. Most were Libertarians or unaffiliated voters.

This is a prime reason why Paul will fare poorly in California, according to political oddsmaker Allan Hoffenblum, a Republican who co-authors an annual analysis of state elections called the California Target Book.

"Everybody says he's like Pat Buchanan but with more charm," Hoffenblum said, referring to the fiery GOP presidential candidate who carried the New Hampshire primary in 1996. "Really, he's more like Ross Perot without the money."

Perot ran as an independent in 1992 and earned 19 percent of the vote. Four years earlier, Paul himself ran as a Libertarian and captured 431,000 votes, or less than one-half of 1 percent. Paul has said he will not run outside the GOP this year.

The Paul campaign is relying on volunteers in California such as Amrine and Tracy coin dealer Robert Hallam; there is no formal operation with paid staffers and an advertising budget here, as there is in New Hampshire and Iowa.

"We have to get the word out," Amrine said.