U.S. Sen. Rand Paul is expected to announced his candidacy on Tuesday, April 7, in Louisville, Ky., before visiting Iowa on Friday.(Photo: AFP/Getty Images)
For Kentucky U.S. Sen. Rand Paul to make inroads in Iowa, here are the factions he'll need to tend closely, according to Iowa political strategists and activists.
1. Liberty movement
Iowa Republicans said U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz is the only candidate who stands a chance of challenging Paul for the liberty vote, a movement inspired by Paul's father, former Texas U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, a three-time presidential contender who finished third in the Iowa caucuses last election.
David Fischer, who was the elder Paul's Iowa co-chairman in 2008 and 2012 and will be a leader in Rand Paul's 2016 Iowa campaign, said conversations he's been having with Iowans indicate the younger Paul will retain "the vast majority of his father's supporters and organization." For example, of the nine Ron Paul backers who led the Republican Party of Iowa in 2012 and 2013, "eight of those nine are standing with Rand," Fischer, a self-employed engineer and home-school parent from rural Polk County, said.
The ninth party official Fischer is Joel Kurtinitis, who fought fiercely for the elder Paul in 2012 but is now solidly behind Cruz.
Kurtinitis agreed that "the majority of liberty folks are going to end up supporting Rand Paul. Nevertheless, Cruz's bid puts Rand Paul in a precarious position, Kurtinitis said. Cruz could peel off "a very important 20% or so" of Paul's Iowa support. "And then you have to subtract all those who door-knocked or volunteered for Ron who have already said they will not do so for Rand," he said.
Des Moines-based attorney David Faith, a liberty conservative with strong libertarian leanings, said Paul's speech Tuesday was "a good start."
"I thought it was well-delivered with good optics in a crowd full of young people and more diverse faces than you usually see at a Republican announcement," said Faith, a Paul backer who blogs for RedState. "He'll still have a lot of work convincing defense and social conservatives that you can be both libertarian, strong and moral."
2. Christian conservatives
Despite strong interest from Iowa evangelical conservatives a year or two ago, Paul appears to have scaled back efforts to court the Christian vote, which can lift a Republican candidate from 1% to a victory in the Iowa caucuses, several pastors told the Register.
Paul captured excitement from Iowa evangelicals who accompanied him on a trip to Israel sponsored by the American Renewal Project in January 2013, but then attended only one of the 20 "pastors and pews" events that the conservative group hosted in Iowa and other states in 2014.
Paul has tried to cater to both social conservatives, who staunchly oppose same-sex marriage and abortion, and libertarians, who oppose government meddling in personal affairs, and that has led to some inconsistencies, Iowa Republicans said.
Sioux City evangelical Christian pastor Cary Gordon said Paul went off the rails when he condoned the June 2013 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that the Defense of Marriage Act was unconstitutional. Other Iowa pastors pointed to Paul's remark in March 2013 that there can be "thousands of exceptions" to a ban on abortion.
Still, American Renewal Project founder David Lane, who has been urging Iowa pastors to see how many votes they can bring to the table and how much money they can raise, has described Paul as well-positioned.
"Sen. Rand Paul is perhaps — structurally — the best-positioned candidate to compete against the apparatus that the moderate Republicans have pieced together over the last quarter century," Lane wrote to supporters Monday. "My best guess is that one candidate: Huckabee, Cruz, Jindal, or Paul is going to catch fire in 2016, then it's mano a mano with the establishment and its candidate."
3. Libertarians
Iowans registered as libertarians seem somewhat lukewarm on Paul.
"Although Rand Paul expresses some libertarian ideals, libertarians will support the candidate that is on the Libertarian Party ticket," said Keith Laube, chairman of the state party. "Several Libertarian candidates, including former (New Mexico) Gov. Gary Johnson, have been preparing for the Libertarian Party nomination in May 2016."
4. Minorities, women and young voters
Twenty-two-year-old Des Moines Republican Katie Joy Ussery thinks Paul has the best shot of the GOP contenders to attract support from women and young people "because he is the champion of issues that extend beyond the lines of gender, race and party, such as defending the Bill of Rights," she said.
"My generation, whether males or females, wants their privacy protected," Ussery, a former president of Drake Young Americans for Liberty, said. "Rand is the champion of decreasing surveillance on law-abiding citizens. My generation, as a whole, believes that the government has gone too far by monitoring our tweets, Facebook messages, text messages, Snapchats, phone calls, voice mails, emails, etc."
Ussery said her generation is exhausted from war, "and Rand Paul is the lone voice in the Senate, and the loudest voice on Capitol Hill, saying that it is time to take a long, hard look at our foreign policy and decide when and for what purposes we should be using our troops."
Independent voter Fernando Aveiga, a real estate agent and a member of LULAC Ames council, believes Iowa Latinos will be receptive if — and that's a big if — Paul can "explain his strategic plan," he said.
"If we see benefit in it and if he has an innovative way to deliver the message, I think he could pick up votes, especially now because so many of us thought we were Democrats, but that's not working for us," Aveiga said.
Mainstream corporations — Home Depot, Lowe's, Hy-Vee, QuikTrip and others — have figured out how to communicate their messages to Latinos, Aveiga said. "Politicians haven't picked it up yet," he said.
5. Fiscal Republicans
Some Iowa business- and tech-savvy Republicans expressed some uneasiness Tuesday about long-term readiness for Paul, who has passed just eight bills in the U.S. Senate. His father's radicalism and his own "defeat-the-Washington-machine" theme cause some nervousness for business Republicans who migrate toward middle-of-the-road consensus-builders with a foreign policy that will keep the stock market and economy stable, they said.
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Paul's Tuesday campaign rollout was marked by some high-tech missteps. News reports said his announcement video was pulled down over a copyright infringement issue, errors existed on his website, and he was criticized for the use of stock photographs instead of pictures of bona fide supporters.
But several budget-minded Republicans predicted the business community will give Paul a serious look.
"My hunch is if Rand Paul goes to some business venues — chamber meetings and the like — they will listen," said Iowa GOP Chairman Jeff Kaufmann.
John Bloom, who is retired from John Deere and is now treasurer for the Polk County GOP, said: "His father had such a deep sincerity about debt in this country. That's a broad theme, and I think Rand Paul has as much credibility as anyone on that. He's not in my top two or three, but he's still on the list."
6. Agribusiness Republicans
Paul has swayed at least some agribusiness-focused Iowa Republicans who were skeptical of him at first, partly because of his refusal to back the Renewable Fuel Standard, a government mandate that boosts the ethanol industry in Iowa.
Chris Schwarck, a co-owner in four ethanol plants and founding partner of Ring-Neck Energy & Feed in Mason City, had a 20-minute conversation with Paul by telephone in January.
"I thought his views slanted to Big Oil," Schwarck said shortly after that call. "You can't have free markets when Big Oil's still getting subsidies and we're not."
But Schwarck was pleased when Paul teamed with Iowa U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley in March on a bill that would grant relief from a regulatory quirk that's thwarting free-market sales of E15 ethanol fuel.
Schwarck said he's now supportive of Paul. "He is supportive of agribusiness and biofuels and ethanol, which is extremely important in our troubled and explosive world for national security."
Source: Top Stories - Google News - http://ift.tt/1Gnc0CH
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