MINNEAPOLIS -- Ron Paul, the contrarian Republican not only didn't endorse his party's candidate for president, he also held his own convention yesterday -- a semi-rock concert that packed the city's NBA arena with 10,000 fans from the political margins.

"This is not a plan to start a third party," Dr. Paul said. "It's really not a plan to be a small wing of the Republican Party. It's a plan to influence, if not have a lot of control over the Republican Party, philosophically speaking."

He'll do that from outside the convention hall. Dr. Paul, who was born and raised in Green Tree, then left for college, medical school and, ultimately, Texas, says he has been given "second-class" credentials and likely won't use them.

That did not prevent him from lobbing a few rounds from the perimeter.

Not only is he not endorsing John McCain, he is openly encouraging both Bob Barr, the former Georgia congressman now running for president on the Libertarian ticket, and Chuck Baldwin, who is running under the Constitutional Party banner.

Dr. Paul hasn't released his 35 delegates because he doesn't consider them captive in the first place.

"What they do is somewhat incidental," he said.

Mostly, he seems steamed that, as he sees it, the party hasn't embraced the people he brought on board, saying his appeal to younger voters is a plausible counterweight to Democrat Barack Obama's.

"The Republican party ought to be welcoming me because I appeal to young people and young people make up our organization and they are wanting to be Republicans," he said. "Yet they are shunned at the state conventions. I think it's a serious mistake."

He spoke at a pre-rally press conference that had an ethereal atmosphere. Dr. Paul mounted the stage and stood at the lectern as reporters sat 30 feet away on the floor level. Questions were answered over the arena loudspeaker, providing an almost ex cathedra voice for a man who had been all but ignored for three decades before his inclusion in a series of televised primary season debates. That put his free-market, non-interventionist politics in the spotlight.

"This has turned out to be much bigger than I ever dreamed," Dr. Paul said in an interview. "I'd been more or less saying and doing these things for 30 years and it was going unnoticed. All of a sudden, with a chance to be in the debates, it just exploded."

That explosion was largely detonated by a cadre of youthful supporters drawn to the candidate's sometimes startlingly blunt rhetoric.

"The foreign policy I talk about used to be the Republican foreign policy," he said. In short, it was largely isolationist in the sense of keeping out of wars and formally declaring war before sending in troops.

Whether they can, as he hopes, reconfigure the philosophy of the Republican Party was unclear. But his supporters knew how to party, and, even for a movement not designed to become one, they know how to look like one.

Convention-style vertical signs with the names of the 50 states bobbed amid the crowd on the floor. A contingent of reporters -- some from conventional newspapers, some from far-right publications such as Willis Carto's American Free Press -- were dutifully credentialed and sent a-wandering.

Copies of a newspaper called "USA Tomorrow," were on every seat in the hall, with headlines such as "McCain's Mob Connections Swept" and "Obama's Communist Cover-up Continues." Health Freedom News magazine ("the magazine that dares to tell the truth") had Dr. Paul on its cover as "A true health-freedom hero."

A John Birch Society flyer juxtaposed a photo of Dr. Paul with that of JBS founder Robert Welch with the words "Together We Can Save the Republic."

Tucker Carlson, the MSNBC television host emceed.

Guitarist Jimmy Vaughan closed it out. In between, Dr. Paul mingled with people as diverse as antiwar liberals to a contingent from the John Birch Society.

Dr. Paul served 10 terms in the House where his libertarian politics in the late '70s marked him as a political exotic and turned him into a cult figure for people estranged from both major parties.

Yesterday, that eclectic mix was on full parade. Jesse Ventura, the shaven-headed professional wrestler who served a term as governor of Minnesota, was on hand as were anti-tax campaigner Grover Norquist and onetime congressman Barry Goldwater Jr., son of the conservative icon. There was no mistaking this for an ordinary political rally. Betwixt speakers, the stage was graced by singer Sara Evans and a Frank Sinatra impersonator.

The odd mix appeals to Dr. Paul.

"Freedom is popular," he said. "Freedom brings people together. The Constitution actually allows us to associate with liberal and everybody else as long as they understand they can't impose their wills on us ... the war brings people together. Civil liberties bring people together."

What they won't do is bring them together to nominate Dr. Paul for president -- a job that he insists he doesn't want anymore.

"I don't have much desire at all to be president," he said. "I used to brag about how I want to be president for the things I don't want to do. I don't want to run your life. I don't want to run the economy and I don't want to police the world. I don't have fire in the belly but I'm willing to do it."