If Rand Paul hoped that shaking up his campaign staff might smooth things over with Kentucky Republicans who are still wary of him, local Republicans aren’t quite sure what to make of it yet. A pair of local party leaders I spoke to said that they still don’t know much about the inner-workings of Paul’s campaign, and suggested they’re still not sure what to expect from the eccentric candidate who has a talent for getting himself into trouble on the national stage.
Rather than embrace an establishment vet to run things after his libertarian-style views caused so much trouble, Paul has doubled-down on his father’s political legacy by choosing longtime Paul family operative Jesse Benton to take over.
The campaign has said that the change in leadership has nothing to do with the spectacular belly flop Paul took in his first week as the GOP Senate nominee, but it’s clear the wounds from the primary — which saw Paul and his supporters beat up the establishment in appearances across the state — are still fresh in Kentucky and Paul needs to do what he can to recalibrate.
It’s also unclear how moving Benton into the lead role will affect Paul’s relationship with the national Republicans. As Kentucky Establishment Republican-In-Chief suggested on Monday, the GOP has not been impressed with how Paul’s outsider campaign team has handled things, and a couple of local officials I talked to yesterday suggested GOP partisans are still feeling the burn of what he said on Maddow last Wednesday night.
So far, the national GOP has yet to weigh in on the campaign changes. The NRSC did not respond to an email about the changeup today, and I couldn’t find any reports of the establishment GOP’s take on Benton stepping into the lead role.
For his part, Benton told WHAS-TV in Kentucky that “we’re going to back up on the national stuff” now that he’s in charge of things and Paul campaign headquarters.
Before Benton’s new job was announced I talked to local party leaders about the shakeup. They said that Paul remains a strong candidate when it comes to local issues and fiscal conservativism. It’s when he ventures beyond the borders of the Bluegrass State that he gets into trouble.
First Congressional District GOP chair Russ Randall said that Paul’s criticisms of the Civil Rights Act on the MSNBC may have caused a bump in the road, but it’s not yet clear if they made things tougher for Paul.
“I think that Paul misspoke about the civil rights stuff and tried to interject his view on property rights into the interview,” Randall said. He said that Democrats are now trying to use the interview to sat that Paul is racist, which Randall rejects. He that by Paul allowing himself to be painted as “extreme” — something else Randall says he’s not — it opened the door to attacks.
“Extreme views always cause problems,” he said. “If people are trying to imply that he’s a racist, it’s going to create a lot of discussion.”
Randall said the timing of Paul’s shakeup made sense to him, but he suggested Paul still has more to do if he wants to win over voters in the First District.
“I would probably have some advice for him,” Randall said. “But as to what that advice would be, that would be between me and him.”
Randall’s political neighbor to the west, Second Congressional District GOP chair James Weise, said how Paul wants to run his campaign is up to him. He called Paul a “novice” who “hasn’t really had a chance to get off the ground yet” as the nominee.
“Sometimes he might say things he wish he hadn’t have said,” Weise said when asked about how the campaign has gone so far.
Like Randall, he had no problem with Paul replacing the campaign manager who put him in front of those national TV cameras.
“What better time to do it than in the early part of the race?” Weise said. “If he thinks he need to shake his team up, more power to him.”
