Ron Paul was holding at a steady 16, 17, 18 points in Iowa polling, up until support for frontrunner Newt Gingrich collapsed. I started becoming concerned because I began receiving calls from many of the good people--including pastors--with whom we worked in the campaign to defeat Iowa's activist judges. These people, who opposed same-sex marriage, were searching for a candidate and were actually beginning to gravitate to Ron Paul. By mid-December, three separate Iowa polls were showing Ron Paul as the winner, with his poll numbers going as high as 28 percent of the vote.

Ron Paul, to his credit, has always been a stalwart pro-life vote, and at NOM we know from our past experience in other elections that faith-based voters who see a strong pro-life candidate often just assume he or she is good on marriage too.

In Paul's case that's just not true, and we had to let Iowa voters know the truth.

Ron Paul's a good man, but he's just wrong on marriage.

We put up a TV ad that Time's Joe Klein called "very effective"

Klein was right. It was a very effective ad. Combined with strategically-placed internet ads which drove voters to a website where they could view the ad, and the outreach with our newsletter (which reaches 12,000 Iowan households each week) and more than 580,000 phone calls we made to social conservative voters, we made sure evangelicals and others in Iowa who care about marriage were informed that Ron Paul's not with them.

Paul did end up with a respectable third place finish in Iowa, with 21 percent of the vote, but here's the kicker: That third-place finish by Ron Paul was largely fueled by the large turnout he got from non-Republican voters, a large plurality of whom went for Ron Paul.

Of course, anti-war and anti-drug war independents and Democrats did not go to the caucuses and change their registration to Republican because of Paul's views on marriage. (Even NOM's collection of video clips documenting Paul's views on marriage show that he is a mixed bag at best, who would leave policy up to the states.)

While there were certainly many factors involved, Ron Paul's fall (despite the crossover vote) and Santorum's rise does suggest that the marriage issue remains strong across a wide swath of the Republican conservative Christian electorate.