Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., spoke about the need for education and criminal justice reforms at the 2014 National Urban League Conference in Cincinnati. This year, he campaigned in Iowa instead. (Photo: Jay LaPrete/Getty Images)

At last year’s National Urban League conference, no one made more headlines than Sen. Rand Paul — not for the substance of his speech or even how many people attended it, but just by virtue of the fact that he showed up.



That’s how low the bar was for a Republican politician doing outreach to African-Americans in the wake of President Obama’s consecutive elections to the White House with more than 90 percent of the black vote. Until Paul, few Republicans had reached out to the National Urban League, which advocates for the black community, let alone addressed it, since Obama took office in 2009.

Urban League President Marc Morial said that the rightward shift of the GOP combined with Obama’s dominance among black voters created less incentive for a Republican to speak before its members. But he expressed optimism about the meaning of Paul’s attendance at the conference last year, calling it “the beginning of what we hope is going to be an ongoing dialogue” with the black community. Paul has since positioned himself as a “Detroit Republican,” concerned with urban issues and criminal justice reform questions. A year ago, Paul was addressing students at historically black colleges and winning plaudits for being “willing to do something almost unheard of in modern presidential politics, which is to make arguments that not everyone in his party already cares about.” Paul even suggested that, with enough attentiveness and the right message, “a third of the African-American vote” could be up for grabs in 2016.

All of which made Paul’s absence at the Urban League’s annual conference and Friday presidential panel a surprise. Instead of continuing his courtship of an urban constituency often hostile to Republicans, on Friday Paul was “touring” eastern Iowa, according to a campaign spokesman.

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Why might Paul be cooling on reaching out to black voters? The answer has a lot do with how the 2016 contest, once joined, has actually shaped up.

Attendees listen to Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul speak at the National Urban League Annual Conference in 2014. (Photo: Tom Uhlman/AP)

Paul has failed to gain traction in the Republican primary, hovering between three and six percent over the last few weeks amid a field that has ballooned to 17 candidates. He also has struggled to fundraise, bringing in just $13 million, as frontrunner former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who did speak at the Urban League Friday, raked in almost nine times as much money through all his affiliated groups.

That makes it all the more critical for Paul to go all in on reaching potential primary voters in the first two voting states, both of which are overwhelmingly white and not known for their major cities.

Issues such as abortion are more exciting to the conservative GOP base right now, and Paul has shifted his attention accordingly: This he week announced he was a co-sponsor of a bill in the Senate to defund Planned Parenthood in the wake of controversial videos attacking the group on the issue of fetal tissue donations.

On Friday, Paul’s campaign sent out an email with the subject line “an immediate DEFUND PLANNED PARENTHOOD Money Bomb.”

“The Abortion Lobby is fighting back with everything they have to ensure they keep their bloody hands on our tax dollars,” the campaign’s email said.

The anti-Planned Parenthood campaign is likely to get much more attention, and positive reception, on Paul’s current tour of Iowa than any speech on criminal justice reform to the Urban League could.

And when a candidate is up against 16 competitors, going with the pack might just help in trying to break ahead of it.