The tension in the St. Louis suburbs could mark a turning point for Paul. Rand Paul's race moment

Sen. Rand Paul is staking out new ground: He’s the Republican who can talk race and police brutality.

In an op-ed for Time magazine Thursday on the events in Ferguson, Missouri, Paul (R-Ky.) took on race, militarized police and why “it is impossible for African-Americans not to feel like their government is particularly targeting them.”


The potential 2016 presidential contender is fond of telling the GOP that it needs to appeal beyond its mostly white base if it wants to be competitive in national races — pushing for sentencing reforms and speaking to traditionally black audiences. But his efforts to make inroads with new GOP constituencies haven’t always gone smoothly.

( Also on POLITICO: Critics slam 'militarization' of police)

The tension in the St. Louis suburbs, however, could mark a turning point for Paul.

The senator’s lengthy, provocative and personal op-ed went further than any other Republican in acknowledging pervasive racial divisions in the U.S.

“Anyone who thinks that race does not still, even if inadvertently, skew the application of criminal justice in this country is just not paying close enough attention,” he wrote.

Republicans have a long way to go toward building support among African-Americans and other minorities. But politicians from both parties often struggle to talk about race — and Paul is winning applause from unlikely places for his willingness to confront the issue.

( QUIZ: Do you know Rand Paul?)

Benjamin Jealous, a former president of the NAACP and current partner at Kapor Capital, said he found Paul’s remarks “genuine” and well-timed politically — but the black community will need more from the senator.

“At some point, he’s going to have to really go there and show a little bit of emotional vulnerability … about what’s converted him,” Jealous said in an interview. “He can’t really say that’s what he’s always felt when he said he wouldn’t have voted for the Civil Rights Act.”

And some liberals found themselves praising Paul for his political bravery — however much it pained them.

“Of course I am a Democrat and the farthest thing imaginable from a right-wing libertarian. But Sen. Paul is showing some ideological spine,” said Paul Begala, a former aide to Bill Clinton. “I gotta call ’em as I see ’em: a guy from the party of Nixon and Reagan — whose careers were built in part on “law and order” — to be so critical of police tactics and weaponry is bracing.”

( Also on POLITICO: Paul, Cruz weigh in on Ferguson)

Facing a flurry of media requests for his position on the events in Ferguson, Paul decided he had to weigh in on the confrontation after watching Wednesday’s media coverage of heavily armed officers and military-style vehicles facing down incensed demonstrators.

But rather than a quick TV hit or a terse statement that left room for interpretation by story-starved political journalists during the August recess, Paul chose to write an editorial he knew would get plenty of attention.

“Everybody wanted to know the libertarian, Republican perspective,” an aide to Paul explained. “It’s one of those issues where you have a lot of liberals upset about it and a lot of libertarians upset because you see military vehicles” being used by police.

By late Thursday morning, the op-ed was being edited at Time. It was released shortly before Obama spoke on Ferguson, scooping the president and going further than any single politician had gone in responding to an increasingly complicated summer news story.

Sen. Ted Cruz, the famous GOP firebrand from Texas and another potential 2016 candidate with libertarian leanings, issued a statement calling the events in Missouri “tragic” that balanced support for police and the civil rights of demonstrators. Even those cautious words marked the greatest leap by a Republican toward Ferguson — until Paul’s piece landed a couple hours later.

The op-ed provoked silence among Paul’s Senate colleagues in both parties, several of whom declined comment. The top Republicans in Congress — Speaker John Boehner of Ohio and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky — have yet to publicly opine on the matter.

Lest anyone think he’s a liberal convert, Paul’s editorial contained plenty of language that would make Republicans proud, blaming “big government” for provoking a scene that he said resembled “war more than traditional police action.”

“Washington has incentivized the militarization of local police precincts by using federal dollars to help municipal governments build what are essentially small armies — where police departments compete to acquire military gear that goes far beyond what most of Americans think of as law enforcement,” he wrote.

Americans United for Change President Brad Woodhouse, a sharp critic of Republicans, found Paul’s remarks on race “notable.” But he said the big government attacks amounted to an “escape hatch” for Paul.

“It just reeked to me that it’s: ‘I’m expected to say something here on the libertarian side but I’ve got to couch it in a way that doesn’t hurt me with regular Republican conservatives,’” Woodhouse said. “I took it as chickens—t, quite frankly.”

“That word perfectly describes my opinion of Mr. Woodhouse,” responded Paul spokesman Brian Darling.

Paul’s outreach to minority voters and young people has been consistent but bumpy. His trip to Howard University in 2013 famously fell flat with many students — and last week he bounced from a confrontation with self-identified DREAMers who approached him and immigration hard-liner Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) as they dined. He’s also drawn criticism for past remarks about the Civil Rights Act as well as employing a former shock jock who’d made myriad offensive statements in the past.

At the same time, Paul struck a deal with Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) to reform the criminal justice system, received plaudits from typically Democratic-leaning groups for his push to restore voting rights to some nonviolent felons and made such a habit of visiting inner-city locales that there’s a constant churn of positive coverage about his entreaties to minorities and young people.

“To me, it’s been an unmitigated success so far,” Paul said in a June interview about his tent-broadening.

The op-ed marked a new frontier for Paul’s strategy to expand the GOP’s appeal and take a leap into a racial discussion that most other politicians were clearly avoiding.

“It’s very easy to get it wrong. And suffer politically because you got the tone wrong,” said Walter Olson, a fellow at the Cato Institute that Paul quoted in his op-ed. Most politicians “would come up with a statement that is inoffensive.”

Paul seemed to find a spot in a Venn diagram that increasingly reveals areas of agreement with Democrats. He was in harmony with Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), who called for a “demilitarization” of police forces in Missouri, and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who said of Ferguson: “This is America, not a war zone.”

But he needs to go further to prove himself to the black community, Jealous said.

“We are looking at a man who is at once a libertarian and a Southern politician with a mixed history on race. And there lies the challenge: He needs to tell us which one he wants to be,” Jealous said. “Most people are willing to believe that he means it when he says it. His challenge is going to be convincing people that he’ll still believe it tomorrow and the day after that.”