Rand Paul hopes for a rules change to bolster 2016 bid
But he faces a rare challenge. The first-term senator from Kentucky wants to keep his day job as a U.S. senatora gig that's up for re-election in 2016while simultaneously making a run at the White House.
Unfortunately for him, Kentucky law prohibits candidates from appearing on the same ballot twice. So Paul and his allies have devised a plan that would help him circumvent that electoral barrier.
On Saturday the first-term senator will go before the Kentucky Republican Party to propose moving the state's presidential preference vote from the May 2016 primary to a caucus two months earlier in March.
That way his name won't appear twice on the May ballot, and Kentucky's presidential nominating contest could possibly become relevant in the national horse race for delegates with an earlier spot in the primary calendar.
It sounds like a win-win situation, but it's an institutional change that would cost a lot of money, require months of planning and potentially lead to lower voter turnout.
Despite the concerns, interviews with more than half a dozen members of the state party's executive committee, which will hear Paul's pitch on Saturday, suggest that the party is likely to move forward with the idea.
The state's party chairman, Steve Robertson, has already appointed a task force to figure out how a caucus could be held in Kentucky. The executive committee will vote Saturday on the appointment of that team.
Paul has spoken with a vast majority of the 54-member committee about his proposal, and he'll elaborate on many of the arguments he laid out in a letter last month to the committee.
"My request to you is simply to be treated equally compared to other potential candidates for the Presidency," he wrote, noting that others, like Rep. Paul Ryan in 2012, have run for their current seat as well as an office on the presidential ticket at the same time.
When the idea of a caucus was first floated, it was met with skepticism from within Republican circles, according multiple Kentucky GOP sources. But Mitch McConnell, the ultimate ringleader of GOP politics in the state, decided to endorse the plan, essentially providing Paul a green light and creating a game changer in the local debate.
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Rand Paul hopes for a rules change to bolster 2016 bid