GOP Sen. Rand Paul makes early 2016 moves in Iowa

(AP) GOP Sen. Rand Paul makes early 2016 moves in Iowa
By THOMAS BEAUMONT
Associated Press
CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa
Republican Sen. Rand Paul opened his presidential exploration tour Friday with a splashy set of speaking engagements in Iowa designed to broaden his tea party brand into something more mainstream and, perhaps, viable.

The son of former Texas Rep. Ron Paul was the headliner at a marquee Republican dinner and was expected to meet with key voting groups in eastern Iowa.

In coming weeks, the Kentucky Republican will reintroduce himself in early voting New Hampshire and South Carolina as a durable would-be candidate able to broaden the GOP into diverse voting blocs dominated by Democrats. He’s laid some of the groundwork for his case by speaking to black and Hispanic audiences and saying he opposes a federal ban on gay marriage.

“I think people are looking for something different. You might accuse me of being not exactly the traditional cookie-cutter Republican,” Paul told reporters on an afternoon of political events in Cedar Rapids. “I do know the GOP needs to grow and I want to be part of growing the GOP.”

Paul wasn’t the only 2016 GOP hopeful introducing himself in early voting states only a few months into President Barack Obama’s second term. Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal was scheduled to headline a Republican state Senate fundraiser in New Hampshire Friday.

All of the prospective GOP candidates face the challenge of uniting a party without a definitive leader after election losses last year. Key voting blocs_women, blacks and Hispanics_ voted overwhelmingly for Democrats. Republicans lost seats in the GOP-controlled House, failed to capitalize on a once-promising shot at winning the Senate majority and the party’s presidential nominee, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, failed to unseat Obama.

The party needs to change, Paul said Friday, and that means taking another look at policies that have alienated some groups. For instance, Paul favors relaxing federal sentencing laws for drug crimes, which disproportionately penalize racial minorities.

“We need to have a Republican Party that looks like the rest of America. We need a more inclusive, diverse party,” he said. “We cannot compete unless we are going to go out and say to African-Americans, we want you in our party.”

Now he’s reaching out to Republicans in early voting states to make the case that he can unite the party and broaden its appeal. Paul, 50, starts with a key advantage: the base of more than a million supporters of his father, a libertarian Republican who sought the presidency in 1988, 2008 and 2012.

On Friday, the senator met with about 10 evangelical pastors, an influential group in Iowa’s Republican caucuses, and was to speak at the Iowa state party’s annual Lincoln Day dinner. He was expected to meet with a Republican women’s group at a Cedar Rapids-area home in the afternoon and speak at a county GOP breakfast Saturday.

After Iowa, Paul is slated to deliver the keynote address at a party banquet in New Hampshire. He’ll cap May’s busy travel schedule with a speech at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California on May 31.

Then it’s back to Iowa next month to court more pastors. And on June 28, Paul attends a fundraiser for Republicans in South Carolina, another early primary state in presidential nominating campaigns.

Among the challenges Paul faces is explaining his opposition to a federal gay marriage ban to influential cultural conservatives in Iowa and South Carolina. Paul says he would fight gay marriage at the state level, an explanation that suffices for Tamara Scott, among Iowa’s leading Christian conservatives.

“He’s trying to strategize where we can keep marriage as God designed,” Scott said.

But some Iowa Republican activists are wary of Paul’s views, many of which they see as in line with his father’s libertarian ideals and at odds with GOP orthodoxy. Paul said last month Republicans “need to be the party that is reluctant to go to war,” and the strong national defense he supports should be for “prevention of war,” not for intervening in conflicts around the globe.

“He has a few ideas that maybe wouldn’t be exactly mine. That would be national security,” said Gwen Ecklund, a Republican county chairwoman in conservative western Iowa.

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Associated Press writer Ken Thomas contributed to this report.

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