Republican Rand Paul invoked the civil rights leader Martin Luther King’s “two Americas” to rail against economic and racial inequality, which he likened to segregation during a visit to a historically black college in Maryland on Friday.
The Kentucky senator provided the audience and travelling press corps a reminder of why his particular brand of libertarian politics – while largely dismissed by the GOP establishment – makes him the most politically intriguing presidential prospect for 2016.
“We still have a problem in our country that that is something like segregation, but it is also somewhat like two systems,” he said. “Or, as Martin Luther King said in 1957, there are two Americas.” While one part of the country “believes in life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”, another side is “witness to a daily disgrace, a lack of hope, despair”.
Paul did not unveil any new policies at Bowie State University, and this was not the first time the conservative has appeared in front of an auditorium of predominantly African American students.
The senator has made searching out and persuading voters who do not traditionally align with Republicans a hallmark of his career, and his positions on civil liberties, privacy and criminal justice allow him to appeal to some liberals who would normally balk at the notion of a candidate who identifies with the Tea Party.
His visit to Howard University in Washington DC last year received mixed reviews after he stumbled over his civil rights history. Friday’s event in the Maryland suburbs, 20 miles outside of Washington, went more smoothly and appeared to be well received.
Cut out the fiscal policy and excerpts of Paul’s remarks – about an “an undercurrent of unease” in the country over the unequal criminal justice system – could have been spoken by President Barack Obama, with whom the senator suggested he strongly agreed on some issues.
Paul referenced his visit to Ferguson, Missouri, the site of unrest over the police killing of Michael Brown, and alluded to another high-profile case – that of Eric Garner, who died while in a chokehold by a New York City police officer.
The senator did not directly refer to Garner, who died after being apprehended by police in Staten Island, New York, over the sale of loose cigarettes, by name. But after remarks about civil penalties and fines in New York, he added: “What reason do we have to have politicians telling the police that they have to take somebody down for selling a cigarette that’s not taxed? Couldn’t we give him a ticket? Couldn’t we say move on?”
Leaning casually beside a lectern, Paul recounted his proposals to fix rules over civil forfeiture – which currently allow the government to confiscate without a conviction – as well as ideas to make it easier for some convicted felons to rebuild their lives, by enabling them to vote and eradicate their records after time served, and tweaks he would make to draconian drug laws.
He also highlighted proposed legislation he is bringing to give judges discretion and loosen mandatory minimum sentences.
He gave the example of Weldon Angelos, from Utah, who is serving a 55-year sentence for selling $300 of marijuana when he was 24 years old. “That’s outrageous,” Paul said. “You can kill somebody in Kentucky and be eligible for parole in 12 years. Something is wrong here.
“To compound this, there is a racial outcome to this. I don’t think there is a racial intention. But I tell people I think they’re not looking if they don’t think that the incarceration problem in our country is not skewed toward one race. I don’t think it is purposeful. But I do think it is actual and it is real and we should do something about it.”
Polling suggests Paul, the ophthalmologist son of libertarian firebrand Ron Paul, is among the top flight of candidates seeking the Republican nomination, even though he is treated with suspicion by some in the party establishment.
In Bowie, Paul received a positive reception from a clearly sympathetic audience, which filled about three-quarters of the lecture theatre.
One of the most enthusiastic applauses came when he mentioned the case of Kalief Browder, who from the age of 16 spent three years in New York’s Rikers Island – much of it in solitary confinement – but was never tried.
“Kalief Browder tried to commit suicide three times. Now I don’t know what happened to him in Rikers, but it certainly wasn’t good, it certainly wasn’t fair, and it certainly wasn’t American to keep a guy locked up for three years without trial, and we ought to change it.”
Paul was also careful not to criticise police in Ferguson, but mentioned he had visited the St Louis suburb, along with other deprived areas of Chicago and Detroit. To combat economic inequality and spur growth, he spoke of his well-trailed idea of “economic freedom zones”, in which he would almost eradicate federal taxes in the most deprived parts of America, kick-starting flagging local economies.
“What I am saying is, think outside the box,” he said. “Because what we’ve been doing hasn’t been working.”
The senator will this weekend travel to SXSW festival in Austin, Texas, to open an office for his political action committee and court the Silicon Valley-types he believes he can draw into what will be an unconventional Republican coalition. He is expected to announce his candidacy for the Republican nomination in early April.
