'I think we can transform an election in one cycle,' he says. Paul makes big vow on black vote

Sen. Rand Paul tells POLITICO that the Republican presidential candidate in 2016 could capture one-third or more of the African-American vote by pushing criminal-justice reform, school choice and economic empowerment.

“If Republicans have a clue and do this and go out and ask every African-American for their vote, I think we can transform an election in one cycle,” the Kentucky Republican said in a phone interview Thursday as he was driven through New Hampshire in a rental car.


Paul — on the cover of the new issue of Time as “The Most Interesting Man in Politics” — met with black leaders in Ferguson, Missouri, last week; opened a “GOP engagement office” in an African-American area of Louisville in June; and spoke the next month to a National Urban League convention in Cincinnati.

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“That doesn’t mean that we get to a majority of African-American votes in one cycle,” Paul continued, speaking between campaign stops in Plymouth and Salem. “But I think there is fully a third of the African-American vote that is open to much of the message, because much of what the Democrats has offered hasn’t worked.”

Exit polls showed the GOP’s share of the African-American vote in the past six presidential elections ranged from 4 percent for John McCain in 2008 to 12 percent for Bob Dole in 1996, according to the Roper Center. Mitt Romney got 6 percent in 2012.

When pressed on his ambitious goal, Paul upped the ante: “I don’t want to limit it to that. I don’t want to say there’s only a third open. … The reason I use the number ‘a third,’ is that when you do surveys of African-American voters, a third of them are conservative on a preponderance of the issues. So, there is upside potential.”

“As I travel and I go and meet with African-American leaders — they may not be ready to embrace a Republican yet,” Paul added. “But they say that they’re very happy that we’re competing for their vote. And they often tell me, ‘You know what? I haven’t seen my Democrat representative in a while.’”

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Paul said that if Republicans win the Senate majority next month and his fellow Kentucky senator, Mitch McConnell, becomes majority leader, the Senate should quickly pass a flurry of bills to put Obama on the spot.

“I see that actually things will get done,” Paul said. “I take McConnell at his word that he will allow amendments from the other side, because that’s how you pass legislation. … I think primary among our voters is they want to undo the worst aspects [of], if not the whole, Obamacare. … There’s quite a bit that was wrong and really, frankly, unconstitutional with Dodd-Frank that I think can be corrected, as well. …

“I think also we’ll pass immigration reform. I think that’s one of the things that’s going to be huge in 2016: Republicans will pass immigration reform, where Democrats never could because of their intransigence, because they wanted everything or nothing.”

Asked what Republicans could pass that Obama would sign, Paul said there are “a lot of bipartisan criminal justice bills that could pass.” Then, in a final dig, Paul quipped: “I think he’ll sign also removing some of the worst parts of Obamacare, as well. But I think we’ll send him also repeal and see how he does on that, as well.”

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Pounding a message he has delivered in interview after interview, Paul said President Barack Obama and his administration have “underplayed the danger and transmissibility” of the Ebola virus and have had a “bossy, arrogant attitude.”

“Because they haven’t been really forthright about the disease, people suspect their leadership, their motives,” Paul said. “They … don’t feel like they’re being told the truth about this. … Because they so much don’t want to alarm people, I think they’ve … undersold the danger of this thing. … When you read their description [of how it is transmitted], it makes me think that they’re talking about AIDS.”

“So, they’ve made it sound like something it really isn’t,” the senator continued. “I mean, people in full gown and full regalia are getting this. … It hasn’t been fair to the health care workers. And I think it’s mostly, ‘Hey, we want to make sure that nobody thinks this is a big deal.’”

Paul attributed the administration’s approach partly to “political correctness, … trying to do what’s conventional without ruffling feathers. … They want everybody to be calm and not think this is too big a deal. And so, they wanted to underplay this.”

“A month ago, I said that we should consider restricting commercial travel and visas to our country from West Africa,” Paul said.

“We should consider rescheduling international conclaves that include bringing leaders from West Africa until the contagion dies down. … Think about what happens if this gets into Third World countries in the Southern Hemisphere, it gets into countries that have no ability to stop this, how it could become a contagion in those countries.”