When you’re a long-shot independent candidate for public office, you’ve got to exploit each news cycle.
Case in point: Gordon Howie, the tea party activist and former South Dakota legislator who’s running in the state’s open U.S. Senate race. In a video he released this week, Howie attempted to milk the viral footage of Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) scrambling to get away from a pair of immigration activists in Iowa.
(The Kentucky senator insisted he wasn’t ducking the activists.)
In the video, Howie is seated next to another man at a table. But as soon as the candidate says he’d like to address immigration, the man gets up and runs away.
“I won’t run from the immigration issue,” Howie says after the man runs out of the frame. “Our borders have to be secure.”
Howie, who’s billed himself as the true conservative in the race’s crowded field, then squeezed in a veiled shot at former South Dakota Gov. Mike Rounds (R), the Republican nominee who’s favored to win the Senate seat in November.
“And unlike my opponent, I will never sell citizenship,” Howie says in closing.
