NYT ^ | 5/25/2012 | Michael Barbaro
CLEVELAND — In Florida, a state trooper pulled Jim Wilson off the highway, but instead of issuing a speeding ticket, asked a favor: Could he have a few Romney for President bumper stickers?
In Michigan, a woman left a handwritten letter for Mitt Romney on Mr. Wilson’s dashboard, recounting her husband’s trouble finding work. “We pray you can get us out of this mess,” she wrote.
And here in Ohio, three young men surrounded Mr. Wilson’s car, repeated a crude anti-Romney chant and broke his driver’s side windshield wiper.
The cocoonlike machinery of the modern presidential campaign, with its bulletproof motorcades, private planes and handpicked audiences, has kept Mr. Romney largely insulated from the public’s raw reactions to his candidacy.
The same, however, cannot be said for his most fanatical supporter, a 69-year-old former life insurance salesman and an unabashedly anti-Obama Republican from Virginia.
For the past year, Mr. Wilson has devoted himself with the single-mindedness of a college-age groupie to following Mr. Romney around the country in decidedly conspicuous style: driving a pickup truck festooned with 27 giant Romney for President posters. (The largest are the size of a refrigerator.)
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