LOS ANGELES — Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul urged California Republicans on Saturday to attract new voters by trying tactics typically associated with Democrats: pushing for expanded voting rights, reforming criminal drug sentences and talking to minorities.
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“Let’s be the party that actually wants to extend the right to vote,” Paul said. “Some people say, well these people are going to be Democrats, more of them are going to be Democrats. Let’s be the party for voting rights, let’s be the party for restoring more voting rights, then more people will come to our party.”
Paul spoke to about 400 delegates in a lunchtime address to the state party’s convention at the Los Angeles Airport Marriott. He said when the Republican Party “looks like the rest of America” it will win again nationally.
Paul has been aggressively touring the country this year as he considers a possible 2016 presidential bid, including several stops to Democratic California.
His libertarian approach to expanding the GOP base has not always been favorably received by fellow Republicans nationally, such as those who criticized him for meeting with students at the liberal University of California, Berkeley, this spring, but California Republicans were enthusiastic.
Nowhere has the effort to attract a new generation of Republicans been more fraught than in left-leaning California, where the GOP’s registration has slid to 28.5 percent — just a few percentage points above the 21 percent of registered voters who are unaffiliated with any party.
“When I went to Berkeley I had a pretty simple message: What you say or do on your cellphone is none of the government’s damn business,” he said.
Paul, an ophthalmologist and the son of former Texas Rep. Ron Paul, has used the civil liberties issue to appeal to millennials.
Most of his address Saturday covered familiar turf. He criticized the growth of federal spending, slammed former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton for her handling of the deadly Sept. 11, 2012, attack in Benghazi, Libya. He did not touch on his vote this week against President Barack Obama’s legislation authorizing the military to arm and train moderate Syrian rebels fighting Islamic State militants in the Middle East or the criticism he received for falsely claiming that Sen. John McCain of Arizona once met with the militants.
On domestic issues, Paul urged Republicans to “show our compassion for people,” particularly young African-Americans and Hispanics who have been disproportionately affected by America’s war on drugs.
“If you look at surveys, it’s not that they’re using drugs more than your kids are using drugs, it’s because they’re getting caught because they live in an urban environment with more patrols, they have less good attorneys, they don’t have the resources, and some of the laws are still frankly wrong,” he said.
Paul is trying to build on the small but passionate coalition assembled by his father and has also emerged as a leading voice on foreign and domestic policy.
He said Republicans need to convert voters in urban areas that are typically controlled by Democrats, which is why he visited Detroit this year, where he said Republicans enjoy just 3 percent support.
“When we look like the rest of America — white, black, brown — we’re going to win again,” he said. “But we’re not going to win with what we’re doing. You see, we’ve got to go out, and we’ve got to broaden our party. When we do, we’ll be the national party again.”
Later Saturday, U.S. House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy of Bakersfield sought to connect disparate factions of the party who have often been at odds over social issues and how conservative to make their message in a left-leaning state. He endorsed the party’s moderate gubernatorial nominee, former U.S. Treasury official Neel Kashkari, and called himself a “happy Republican.”
“I’m tired of the naysayers,” he said.
“If you want to know the question of the day and what we need from you, is that we join together. We climb in the boat together, we row together. I don’t care where you come from in the party, we all row in the same direction.”