Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., told Politico that the GOP could win one third of the black vote in 2016 by promoting “criminal-justice reform, school choice and economic empowerment.”
In a phone interview with Politico, Paul said:
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. That doesn’t mean that we get to a majority of African-American votes in one cycle, 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.
Paul told Politico that his meetings with African-Americans have been productive:
As I travel and I go and meet with African-American leaders — they may not be ready to embrace a Republican yet, 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.’
Paul added that he did not want to “limit” the GOP to a third of the vote: “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.”
Young Rand Paul supporter Aylicia Stover from North Carolina holds an autographed photo of her favorite candidate at the 2014 Conservative Political Action Conference. (Photo: Jeff Malet/Newscom)
In a recent interview with CNN, Paul called the GOP’s failure to reach out to African Americans “the biggest mistake we’ve made.” Paul has recently met with African-American leaders in Ferguson, Mo., and students at historically black colleges.
Exit polls indicate that former Mass. Gov. Mitt Romney won only 6 percent of the African-American vote in 2012.
Paul, a potential 2016 presidential candidate, was recently pictured on the cover of TIME magazine where he was called “The Most Interesting Man in Politics.”
