Rand Paul opts to 'go west' to revive campaign

Tom Loftus | The (Louisville) Courier-Journal

FRANKFORT, Ky. — Near the end of a summer that saw him plunge in national polls among Republican voters, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul found himself in the East Gold Room of the Westmark Hotel in Fairbanks, Alaska.

It was part of a five-day western swing that also took Paul's campaign to Washington, Idaho, Montana and Wyoming. They are states, Paul’s campaign says, that other candidates ignore.

Paul’s campaign, straining to remind Republicans he’s the man Time magazine called "the most interesting man in politics" less than a year ago, is hoping to regain traction with an appeal to liberty-loving westerners who supported the 2008 and 2012 presidential campaigns of his father, former Texas congressman Ron Paul.

“We are going to states where the senator will be favored, or heavily competitive,” Chip Englander, Paul's campaign manager, said this week. “While it’s not sexy because they are not among the first four states that vote, they all come shortly thereafter and they’re states we’ll do really well in.”

“He’s decided to go west like his father did,” said Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics. “He’s working on the small-turnout caucuses in states in the western half of the United States to make a showing.”

Yet, Paul continues a slide in national opinion polls. The RealClearPolitics website, which aggregates results of recent polls, shows Paul has dropped from fourth place, with about 10% support in early May, to 10th place with about 3% by the end of August.

Englander says he is not discouraged by the polls and notes that Paul’s standing is still enough to qualify him to participate in the upcoming Sept. 16 CNN debate at the Ronald Reagan Library in Simi Valley, Calif.

“Early polls are meaningless. The reality is 15 of the 17 candidates are in single digits,” he said.

He added that Paul “realizes that winning campaigns are the ones that plan the work and work the plan over time.”

That plan called for the unusual western tour, he said, but with emphasis on early-voting states. Paul was in New Hampshire, Vermont and Maine this week. Next week, back to Iowa.

Donald Trump currently reigns as the anti-Washington favorite among Republican voters — a position in the field Paul hopes to stake out for himself — so the plan also calls for continuing to challenge Trump, a strategy that began in the first debate on Fox News in August.

”Republicans, at least temporarily, are expressing their frustrations with the party and with Congress by picking people who couldn’t find their way around Washington without a street map," said Sabato. "The odd thing is that Paul and (Texas Sen. Ted) Cruz are about as anti-Washington as you can get. But they happen to be in public office.”

Paul, for his part, is hoping to chip away at Trump's appeal by questioning his conservative bona fides.

“There’s a lot of bluster and anger on Trump's part, but really a lot of his solutions have been big government solutions,” he said in an interview this week on Boston Herald Radio. “I think eventually people are going to come to their senses and say, ‘Oh my goodness, I like this angry vitriol, but you know what? I didn’t realize he was for gun control, and for Obamacare, for increased taxes and for taking private property.'”

Jennifer Duffy, senior editor for The Cook Political Report, said how long Paul and others down in polls can survive depends on whether Trump’s support holds.

“But he’ll be in it as long as the money lasts," Duffy added of Paul. Englander said the Paul campaign has sufficient funds “to be successful.”

As for whether Paul will be campaigning out west again soon, Englander said, “Sen. Paul will go anywhere there are people who are interested in hearing about real solutions to pay down the $19 trillion debt, who want a flat tax" and "who want to get rid of the career politicians.”

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