Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul intended to build his 2016 presidential bid on efforts to reach out to minority communities, but his sympathetic tone this week unraveled after comments he made about the Baltimore riots.
According to
Politico, Paul missed an opportunity to talk about the troubling death of 25-year-old Freddie Gray, an African-American, at the hands of the police, instead making glib comments on "The Laura Ingraham" radio show.
"I came through the train on Baltimore last night," he said, according to Politico. "I'm glad the train didn't stop."
He added that the outbreak of violence was due to "the breakdown of the family structure, the lack of fathers, the lack of sort of a moral code in our society," and expressed sympathy for the "plight of police," never mentioning the death of Gray.
The response drew a stark contrast from his efforts to reach out to black communities in the past. As part of that effort, he had conducted a series of visits to black colleges and universities and meetings with community leaders.
And in the wake of clashes in Ferguson, Missouri, he made a visit and then issued a strongly-worded opinion piece
for Time magazine calling for the demilitarization of police and acknowledging the feelings of blacks toward police.
After his most recent comments, Paul faced some backlash, particularly from the black leaders he went out of his way to court. His team has now admitted that his wording had been particularly off.
"We recognize how it may have sounded to some people," senior adviser Elroy Sailor told Politico. "We're listening and learning every day and we learned from this. We're also leading this conversation."
Black leaders, however, have been vocal in their displeasure.
"You can say you're concerned about our issues but when this is happening and you make a snide, demeaning remark, it shows that he doesn't understand the frustration in our community," John Bailey, director of the non-partisan Colorado Black Roundtable, told Politico.
"If he was really concerned, he wouldn't be relieved his train didn't stop [in Baltimore]; he'd have gotten that train to stop and gotten off to see what's happening."
Just one month earlier, Paul came under fire over a similar situation. As a video showing a South Carolina police officer shooting an unarmed black man as he tried to run riveted the nation, Paul told an audience in New Hampshire, "Today we sit atop a powder keg" — and referred to the national debt.
When given an opportunity later that day to talk about the shooting of Walter Scott, he avoided a discussion about the sentiment in the black community, saying instead, "98, 99 percent of police are doing their job on a day-to-day basis and aren't doing things like this," Politico reported.
"It just reinforces my opinion that he still doesn't understand the plight or circumstances of our community," Raoul Cunningham, head of the NAACP in Louisville, Paul's hometown, told Politico.
Some black Republicans who were encouraged by Paul's earlier work to court the black community say they are worried that his recent missteps could set back an otherwise sincere initiative.
"I do feel that he's genuinely concerned about criminal justice reform and bringing solutions to minority communities," Glenn McCall, an RNC committeeman from South Carolina who is black, told Politico. "But we don't want to come across as being patronizing."
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