Some observers call the move a somewhat gimmicky gambit on a serious subject. Paul uses suit to boost campaign

Rand Paul’s move to sue the National Security Agency is his latest expression of outrage about government overreach and invasion of privacy.

It’s also an unusual play by the likely presidential candidate to advance his political ambitions.


Largely unnoticed in Paul’s effort is this: the names and email addresses of anyone who registers support for his class-action suit against the NSA goes straight into the Kentucky Republican senator’s political database, which he could leverage into a campaign.

( QUIZ: Do you know Rand Paul?)

It’s one of the most high-profile attempts yet by a potential 2016 White House candidate to link a specific policy debate to unabashed campaign politics, and strategists say it’s a smart way to bulk up his campaign list and energize his base. Legal success or failure aside, Paul supporters view the effort as a chance for him to drive the conversation on a hot-button issue while honing his brand as a small-government champion and making overtures to young voters, a group he’s betting cares deeply about protecting privacy.

Some observers, however, call the move more political than anything else — a somewhat gimmicky gambit on a serious subject with questionable chances of effecting legal change.

Paul, who’s up for reelection to the Senate in 2016 but is widely thought to be weighing a presidential bid, announced earlier this month that he is pursuing the lawsuit following revelations of extensive NSA data-gathering, including of phone records and other information. Signing up to support the court action takes place on Paul’s campaign website — RandPaul2016.com — as well as on his non-governmental Facebook page and at RandPAC.com, though joining the petition doesn’t automatically make one a party to an eventual suit.

“We think what the government is doing now is overreach,” Paul told POLITICO in an interview Thursday, referring to the NSA’s mass collection of data. “We don’t think we can allow the president, who’s allowed this overreach, to be the one to police [it] himself.”

( PHOTOS: Rand Paul’s career)

On Friday, he issued a statement dismissing President Barack Obama’s new NSA reform proposals as “the same unconstitutional program with a new configuration” and pledged to press on with the lawsuit as well as an act he’s pushing in Congress.

Paul’s advisers say that mounting the class-action petition through official Senate channels would be difficult, which is why they are utilizing campaign sites, and they stress that the lawsuit is not being paid for with taxpayer dollars. A senior Paul adviser acknowledged, however, that people who sign on to the effort also will be added to the campaign’s lists for use down the road.

“This could have been done through some other named website,” the adviser said. “We did it straight up. Go to RandPaul2016.com or RandPAC.com to sign up. They know who they’re giving their name to. It’s a couple hundred thousand people who obviously care about this issue, care about Rand taking action on this issue. [We’re] sure there are other things they’ll care about.” (As of earlier this week, the adviser put the signature count at more than 300,000.)

One missive from Paul that’s featured prominently on the campaign sites reads: “I’m OUTRAGED — and I’m going to do everything I can to END this madness.” It concludes with a call for “a generous donation … to stop Big Brother.” The donations go to the Paul campaign, though the senior adviser wasn’t able to provide fundraising numbers directly resulting from the class-action efforts.

( Also on POLITICO: Obama on NSA: A reluctant reformer)

Benjamin Wittes, a legal expert on national security issues at the Brookings Institution, said that from what he knows about the lawsuit so far, “it will accomplish absolutely nothing” because the general argument “essentially duplicates litigation” already underway in the courts. He noted that could change depending on what argument Paul’s team advances or whether it joins with other pending litigation, but said that for now, the lawsuit appears to be more “a way of expressing substantial political discontent.”

“It’s a way of…forcing the administration to talk about things,” Wittes said. “There’s a lot of value — I don’t say this pejoratively — from a PR point of view in having the litigation. If (they filed) early in the process, it could be the leading edge of the mechanism by which this gets decided. But I think it’s going to be more the former than the latter.”

On a tactical level, veteran digital campaign strategists said Paul’s approach is savvy and forward-looking, and they noted that it differs from that of several of his potential opponents, who have tended to shepherd supporters through PACs or generic campaign sites that make no mention of the next contest or aren’t yet fully functioning.

For instance, ChristieforNJ.com, New Jersey Republican Gov. Chris Christie’s 2013 campaign website, is defunct for now. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) has a PAC called “Reclaim America,” a title that doesn’t mention the senator, or the next contest. TedCruz.org allows visitors to sign up to “stand with Ted,” but doesn’t suggest when the Texas Republican senator will need their support.

On the Democratic side, online efforts are gearing up around Hillary Clinton: her 2008 presidential campaign’s email list is being rented to the super PAC Ready for Hillary, which is urging a presidential run from the former secretary of state.

By directly linking his name to an issue, Paul is tapping into what could prove a particularly passionate group of supporters. He’s far from the first candidate to campaign and fundraise off a particular policy issue — Republicans take that approach to Obamacare all the time; some Democrats did the same to the war in Iraq or the so-called “war on women” — but by launching a lawsuit coupled with an aggressive media campaign, Paul is upping the ante.

“Branding matters with these things,” said Zac Moffatt, who directed digital strategy for Republican Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential bid. “If he says ‘Rand Paul 2016,’ he’s finding people who are choosing to sign up for Rand Paul.”

GOP digital strategist Patrick Ruffini said that, of course, other candidates will ramp up their efforts as 2016 nears. Referencing moves by Paul and of Clinton’s supporters, he added that they are “doing what they need to do to put themselves in a position to start in a strong place on Day 1.”

“On the day you announce, you want to have a base of people…You’re going to see people getting more and more aggressive about it,” Ruffini said.

Paul has mounted other fundraising initiatives tied to policy positions on the websites — auditing the Federal Reserve, for example, or Obamacare — but he has pushed this effort in a particularly high-profile way, plugging it during cable news interviews, on social media sites and on the closely watched Sunday shows.

The suit, Paul told POLITICO, will argue that “the NSA program contravenes the Fourth Amendment,” which guards against unreasonable searches and seizures.

“We think the Fourth Amendment doesn’t allow a single warrant to apply to hundreds of millions of people,” Paul said. “We think the Fourth Amendment is pretty clear — a warrant should be specific to the person, the place, the items. We feel very strongly, and I think there’s some indication, that the Supreme Court will expand the breadth of the Fourth Amendment to apply to some of these records [gathered by the NSA].”

The project has been in the making awhile, Paul aides say: he first started a petition protesting NSA tactics several months ago. But when a D.C. judge ruled in December that certain data-collection practices could be unconstitutional, that kicked things up a notch, leading to the announcement of the class-action suit and subsequent prominent advertising of the case.

To pursue his arguments in court, Paul is enlisting the aid of some well-known conservative lawyers, including former Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, who could file a complaint by the end of the month. Court venues in Kentucky, the Washington, D.C. area or an eastern Virginia district are among those under consideration.

Cuccinelli, a tea party favorite who lost a race for Virginia governor last fall, said he was asked to join in December by Doug Stafford, Paul’s former chief of staff who is now executive director of RandPAC, and is focused full-time on Paul’s political apparatus. Cuccinelli said the lawyers are still working on wording the complaint. He added that he hoped the case would be underway in time to affect the reauthorization of elements of the Patriot Act, which Congress will consider in 2015.

“I would say there are two end goals: One is to shine a light on this abuse on the policy side so that reauthorization [of elements of the NSA program] doesn’t happen in 2015, or is dramatically scaled back,” Cuccinelli said. “And two, it is to set the legal precedent that the government doesn’t have the right to come in and gather up all of the citizens’ and non-citizens’ personal information, frankly … That’s the legal goal, to rein in the government from this sort of behavior.”

Paul has said in several interviews that Republicans can make inroads with younger voters by emphasizing privacy rights. Obama won a whopping 60 percent of the youth vote in 2012, but Paul preaches that the GOP can recover in part by tackling privacy issues. The gist of his argument: complex tax code debates, for example, may not move the youth vote dial, but young people have a personal stake in the security of their cell phone.

“Certainly, there’s no secret about it, he believes this issue would resonate with younger people,” the adviser said, adding, “He’s not looking for issues, not saying, ‘Hey, I need to appeal to young people. What should I do?’ It’s the other way around. These are his natural issues, the reasons he wants to be here, the things he wants to talk about. But one of the selling points he’s going to make to other people in his party and elsewhere, is this is an issue young people care about.”

At the same time, the case also puts Paul to the left of Obama on a national security issue, which may not do him favors with the establishment wing of his own party, whose support he will need if he runs for president. Many Republicans have defended the NSA, arguing the agency needs to have the proper tools to prevent terrorist attacks.

Obama, in announcing his proposals to reform surveillance policies, which include restrictions on the collection and storing of telephone metadata, also defended the country’s intelligence apparatus. The president said the men and women working within it have “extraordinarily difficult” jobs.

”We cannot unilaterally disarm our intelligence agencies,” Obama said.

Paul’s advisers say he will likely step up his public promotion of the lawsuit as a filing date draws closer. The Kentuckian made the initial announcement in a Fox News interview, directing viewers to his Facebook and PAC pages. On Facebook, he has several links to his campaign site sign-up page.

“It’s really smart to identify people who share this point of view,” said Moffatt, the Romney campaign alum. “If you’re going to be a politician and take a stand, you should know who stands with you.”