Bowie, Md. Rand Paul, the junior senator from Kentucky, is making as determined an effort as just about any GOP presidential hopeful to bring in minority voters to the party, particularly black voters. Paul’s Friday visit to a historically black college in Washington’s Maryland suburbs was an exercise in this minority outreach, though it remains unclear if the Republican’s direct overtures to black America will benefit the GOP.
Speaking in blue jeans, a red tie, and rolled-up sleeves, Paul addressed a racially mixed crowd at Bowie State University, which has nearly 90 percent black enrollment. There were plenty of Paul fans, young and old, in the audience. One young (white) man, sitting near the front of the auditorium, donned a backward red cap stamped with the words “Stand With Rand.” At one point Paul joked that he liked the “supposition” of a question that began, “What would you do as president…” Plenty applauded, with one woman shouting from the back, “Stand with Rand!”
Paul-watchers will be familiar with his general pitch to black voters and how it hinges on criminal justice reform. Several features of the criminal justice system—civil forfeiture of property, mandatory minimum sentencing for non-violent drug offenses, a lifetime criminal record—are all, in Paul’s view, un-American as well as unfairly burdensome to racial minorities. Republicans can and should offer public policy remedies to these problems, Paul says, and it just so happens that he’s offering a few in the U.S. Senate alongside Democrats like New Jersey’s Cory Booker (who is black).
At Bowie State, Paul touted his and Booker’s REDEEM Act, which would allow non-violent drug offenders to eventually wipe clean their records in order to get a job. “What it does is it takes some of these minor felonies, mostly drug possession and some drug sale, and says, if you’ve been punished, you’re out of jail, you’ve paid your debt to society, and there’s a certain period of time, you should get rid of your records,” Paul explained. “You’d expunge your record so you can get back to work.” The bill would also limit the use of solitary confinement in juvenile detention centers.
Passing this and other proposals, said Paul, can help cure the “undercurrent of unease” that plagues parts of America and “radically transform our country.”
Radically transform? That sounds more like something the current president might say, and there are times when Paul makes Obama-like appeals to those who may feel left out of the American dream. Other times, he dials back rhetoric.
“There’s one America that believes in life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. But there’s another America that is a witness to a daily disgrace, a lack of hope,” Paul said, channeling Martin Luther King Jr.’s call on two Americas to unite as one.
One prominent black Republican attending the speech in Bowie suggested that discussing justice issues really can offer the GOP a way into black voters’ hearts. Bloomberg’s Dave Weigel asked Michael Steele, the former RNC chairman and Maryland lieutenant governor, where improving the criminal justice system ranked on the list of issues for members of the black community.
“Let me tell you this,” Steele said, his voice noticeably raised. “It impacts everything you do, from how you run your business to where you educate your kids to how you drive home at night. It affects everything you do. So there is no ranking for that, because it just is. It just is. You get up in the morning, you’re black. You go to bed at night, you’re black. And everything that happens in between, that issue is interwoven into that.”
Paul’s betting on criminal justice reform as a gateway issue with black Americans. But it’s hard to imagine Paul giving the same address in, say, Des Moines. It’s also easy to imagine black voters interpreting the selective focus on justice issues as pandering, as audience members did at Paul’s less artful attempt two years ago at Howard University. There’s little doubt that the Kentucky senator’s civil libertarian beliefs on criminal justice are genuinely held. But the rhetoric could alienate the people he’d have to win over in a GOP primary. Take Paul’s revealing riff in Bowie on the Bill of Rights.
“I think we have to pay more attention to the Bill of Rights,” said Paul. “I tell people the Bill of Rights isn’t necessarily for the prom queen, although it will apply to her also. It’s not necessarily for the high-school quarterback, the college quarterback. Those who are popular among you will always do fine. It’s for the least popular among you. It’s for those who might have unorthodox ideas. It’s precisely for minorities.”
It’s an interesting appeal to those who feel like they’re on the outside, looking in. But is it a message that will gain any traction with everyday Republicans?