The Kentucky senator went to Ferguson for a 45-minute “listening session. Paul meets black leaders in Ferguson

FERGUSON, Mo. — With racial tensions here flaring anew, Republican Sen. Rand Paul on Friday urged the African-American community to use its “power” at the ballot box to achieve change and not turn to rioting.

On the heels of another police shooting of a young African-American man, the Kentucky senator came here for a 45-minute “listening session” with a group of 20 local black leaders, including pastors, local business owners and representatives of the NAACP, the Urban League and the Anti-Defamation League.


Paul, who has made GOP outreach to minorities a cornerstone of his message for a likely 2016 presidential campaign, is the first White House hopeful of either party to visit this town of 21,000, which dominated headlines over the summer after a white police officer shot and killed Michael Brown, an 18-year-old, unarmed African-American.

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One person at the session asked Paul whether diversity on police forces should be mandated by the federal government. Paul, noting that two-thirds of the city’s population is black, told them it’s best to push for such change through elections.

“My opinion is they have a great deal of power and if they wanted an African-American police chief they’d get it in one election if they just go vote for the mayor and register people,” Paul, wearing blue jeans, cowboy boots and a black turtleneck, said afterward. “They were not too antagonistic to that. Some of them still want some kind of federal intervention here, but they have a great deal of power and could do anything they want if they register people to vote.”

More than 3,200 residents of Ferguson, or one-seventh of the residents, have registered to vote since Brown was killed in August. Liberal groups set up booths on the street where Brown was killed to get people on the rolls.

The Missouri Republican Party’s executive director, Matt Wills, told the conservative blog Breitbart in August that the voter registration drive was “not only disgusting but completely inappropriate.” “If that’s not fanning the political flames, I don’t know what is,” he said.

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Paul stressed that he strongly supports getting more people on the rolls across the board – even if they’re Democrats – including through restoring the voting rights of non-violent convicted felons.

“I haven’t seen the comments, but my comment is I want more people to vote, not less,” he said. “If we want to win elections, we’ve got to try to compete for African-American votes.”

“Violence gets nowhere and it actually sends us backwards,” he added. “If that energy, and some anger, if that were channeled into registering voters and getting people out to vote, then you can have constructive changes.”

The exchange is a reflection of the unique place that Paul finds himself in, balancing his libertarian world view that calls for minimal federal intervention with trying to broaden the GOP’s appeal to African-Americans — all while trying to become the standard bearer of a party that has won a series of elections since the 1960s on “law and order” messages.

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The roundtable itself was closed to the media, on the grounds that it would let people in the room speak their minds, but Paul spoke extensively with reporters from POLITICO and Time afterward on his drive to the airport.

In another frank exchange during the meeting with African-American leaders, Paul found himself defending voter ID laws. Attendee Kenneth Murdock, a local radio host and onetime Democratic operative, asked Paul about the push by Republican state legislatures to stop same-day registration and limit early voting.

Paul told the group that he defers to states but opposes discrimination, in Murdock’s retelling.

“I wish he would have taken a stronger stance on sarcastically-named voter ID laws, but … he can’t really upset his party too much,” Murdock said.

Paul got into hot water this spring when he criticized his party for passing voter ID laws, saying that “it’s wrong for Republicans to go too crazy on this issue because it’s offending people.” He complained on Fox News that his comments had been “overblown.”

His tone has been more cautious and nuanced since then. Paul said he had not read the Supreme Court’s Thursday decision that blocks Wisconsin from implementing a tough new voter ID law in next month’s election.

“In general, unless there is a clear cut indication they’re trying to discriminate or suppress votes, states can decide these things,” Paul said afterward. “The perception among many people is that the voter ID laws are to suppress the vote. I don’t think they are. I think there are people who truly want to have an accurate vote.”

Kimberly Jade Norwood, a professor of law and African American Studies at Washington University in St. Louis, wondered whether federal dollars could be used – as a carrot or stick – to improve local police training “so that officers keep bullets in their guns a little bit longer.”

“I think he got it,” she said.

Paul said he understands the desire by local residents to have the Justice Department issue consent degrees and exert control. “I think there’s a role for the federal government to step in when laws are discriminatory or when there’s police action that is, frankly, discriminatory,” he said.

The session, which took place in a storefront on the main drag of town amid pouring rain, came after a second night of street protests in neighboring St. Louis after a white off-duty cop, in uniform and moonlighting as a security guard, killed another 18-year-old African-American. Authorities say that the teen, Vonderrit Deondre Myers, fired three pistol shots at the officer, who fired back 17 times.

Law enforcement agencies are preparing for riots if a grand jury decides in the next few weeks not to indict Officer Darren Wilson for shooting Brown.

Local leaders fear the worst if Wilson isn’t charged and sentiment grows that the police department is not on their side. The Justice Department just sent a letter asking officers to stop wearing bracelets that say, “I am Darren Wilson.”

Paul said he “hesitated” to come to Ferguson with the legal issues surrounding the shooting unresolved. But he was already in town to speak at a Thursday night fundraiser for the Show-Me Institute, a think tank co-founded by one of Missouri’s biggest Republican political donors.

“There’s a certain amount of frustration here about a lot of things, and the shooting brought it to the surface, but a lot of it’s been there,” said Paul.

He declined to say whether he thinks Wilson should be charged.

“It’s a mistake for people in national government to sort of weigh in and try to influence something like a grand jury, which is secret and looks at evidence,” said Paul. “It should not be something I should try to influence one way or the other.”

The senator has made several forays into the black community, including trips to Chicago, Detroit and Memphis. He spoke in July to the National Urban League’s annual conference in Cincinnati.

Like at those other stops, Paul noted that black unemployment has been twice as high as white unemployment. He emphasized legislation he’s introduced to reduce mandatory minimum sentences, change the way the country prosecutes the war on drugs and create economic freedom zones.

“They’re sympathetic to that, but they’re also frustrated that things aren’t happening quick enough,” he said.

Paul was also the first likely 2016 contender to speak out on Ferguson, writing an op-ed decrying the sale of surplus military equipment to local police departments and making clear that he believes racism still very much exists in society.

“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 for Time.

Several attendees applauded Paul for coming; one person pointed out that the state’s junior Republican senator, Roy Blunt, has not come to Ferguson since the shooting, but Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill has.

“It takes people on both sides of the aisle to move our agenda forward,” said John Gaskin, a member of the NAACP’s St. Louis County chapter.

Paul has been working to preach a version of small-government libertarianism that will have mass appeal. He explained that he supports increasing federal funding for job training programs but said it should be paid for with the savings from shorter prison sentences for non-violent drug offenders.

“If you have a guy who’s been in jail for seven years and you give him a one-year sentence and then give him a job-training program, it still cheaper than keeping him in jail for seven years,” he said. “There would be money for job training if you greatly lessened criminal sentencing.”

Paul said he wasn’t there to demonize law enforcement.

“Most police are good people,” he said. “Probably just like the general public – 98 to 99 percent of policeman are good. That’s why I don’t this to be that I’m coming here to be against police. I’m pro-law enforcement, pro-law-and-order.”