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WILTON, Iowa A potential Republican presidential contender and the GOP candidate for one of the hottest races in the U.S. Senate were among the special guests at a barbecue benefit in Wilton on Wednesday evening.

About 300 guests at the event, not including both local and national media, packed the Wilton Community Center to meet with and hear from U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Kentucky, and state Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Red Oak.

Paul, who was there to support not only Ernst, but other local Republican candidates, is a first-term senator who is known for his libertarian political philosophy. Considered to be a contender for the 2016 GOP presidential nomination, he is the son of former U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, who himself ran for president twice as a Republican.

The event was the sixth annual fall barbecue hosted by the Kaufmann family of Wilton, a prominent family in state Republican politics. Iowa Rep. Bobby Kaufmann, R-Wilton, who hosted the event, is running to secure a second term representing House District 73. Kaufmann said he'd met Paul on a campaign trip and found that they shared a common passion about the rights of property owners, one of the subjects of Paul's recent book, "Government Bullies."

"We just really hit it off," Kaufmann said.

Bobby Kaufmann noted that Paul is the fourth presidential contender to visit one of his family's barbecues during the past several years.

In his remarks, Paul argued against federal overreach regarding not just property rights, but in free speech and search and seizure issues, saying that the government has intruded too far on citizens' rights with electronic surveillance.

"This was what the [American] Revolution was fought over," Paul said.

Ernst, who spoke after Paul, is campaigning for the U.S. Senate to replace retiring Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa. A lieutenant colonel in the Iowa National Guard, she is facing U.S. Rep. Bruce Braley, D-Iowa, in a tight race for the seat. She spoke out against Braley, saying that he has been too willing to attempt to raise taxes and not do enough to reduce the national debt.

"I'm not willing to pass that along to my children," she said.

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Rand Paul visits Wilton, boosts local candidates' profiles

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Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul, who is running might run for president in 2016, is on a roll of late. He was named one of Washington's most beautiful people, "won" the title of best dressed man in Washington because of his affinity for turtlenecks, and also topped Politico's list of the "thinkers, doers and dreamers" who matter in politics. This week, Time Magazine named him the "most interesting man in politics"-- a label that could practically be on his business card.

Paul is interesting. But sometimes his mouth gets him into trouble.And sometimes what he says makes it hard to take him seriously, even as he frames himself as a big thinker and change agent in his party.

Take his suggestion that in 2016, Republicans can get a third of the black vote with the proper outreach and policy ideas. Of course, Paul being Paul, he wasn't content to cap the imagined GOP success with the black vote at a mere 33 percent.Because, when you're the most interesting man in politics, why not just keep pushing the limits?

I dont want to limit it to that. I dont want to say theres only a third open. The reason I use the number a third, is that when you do surveys of African-American voters, a third of them are conservative on a preponderance of the issues," he said in an interview with Politico. "So, there is upside potential.

Yes, there is upside potential for Republican presidential candidates when it comes to black voters. After getting 6 percent of the African American vote -- not a typo -- in the 2012 cycle, there really is only "upside potential."

But history would disagree with Paul's optimism. Not since Richard Nixon in 1960 have Republicans been able to crack 30 percent among black voters in a presidential race.

Paul's theory that black voters, because they often have religiously-based views that put them in line with white social conservatives, could be swayed toward Republicans is not a new one.During the 2012 campaign, Herman Cain made a nearly identical claim about his pull with black voters. He was fond of saying that African Americans were finally "thinking for themselves," and would no longer be subjected to "brainwashing" and were over that whole first black president thing.

The African American vote, I am confident, based upon black people that I run into, black people that used to call my radio show, black people that have signed up on my website to support me. I believe, quite frankly, that my campaign, I will garner a minimum of a third of the black vote in this country and possibly more.

But Paul is not a longshot like Cain was. Polls show that he is in the 2016 GOP hunt. For Paul, expanding the tent is one of his signature issues. So, maybe he has real ideas about the how of attracting upwards of 33 percent of African American voters to the GOP tent? New, bold ideas that really could shake up electoral politics as we know it?

Well, not quite. Sure, he is actually talking to African Americans in communities, most recently in Ferguson, Missouri. But targeted outreach was also part of George W.Bush's strategy and earned him a meager 11 percent of the black vote. As for policy, Paul has landed on school vouchers (Mitt Romney), economic empowerment zones (Jack Kemp), and criminal justice reforms (Newt Gingrich) as positions that could help him triple Bush's mark. Yet, he seems to miss that over the last 20 years, none of these ideas were able to significantly move the needle.

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