Sen. Rand Paul Looking To Change Kentucky Law With His Eyes On The White House

Kentucky Republicans are considering changing a state law so that Sen. Rand Paul can run for both president and his Senate seat 2016, according to Politico. The preliminary talks began after Kentucky Democrats retained control of the state House in Tuesday’s midterm elections, an outcome that makes changing the state law more difficult.

But Kentucky Republicans have revived the discussion and are exploring the possibility of making the state’s presidential primary into a caucus, which could allow the libertarian-leaning senator to run for both the Senate and the White House in 2016, according to the Washington Post.

Kentucky law currently states: “no candidate’s name shall appear on any voting machine or absentee ballot more than once.” Kentucky Democrats have already promised not to change the law, which means Paul will have to abandon his chamber seat in order to pursue presidency.

But at Tuesday night’s victory party for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell in Louisville, Paul and Steve Robertson, chairman of the state party, briefly discussed the idea of changing Kentucky’s primary into a caucus system instead. “He’s got as many questions about it as I do,” Robertson told Politico. “He’s just curious how it could work.”

Changing the state’s May primary to a caucus system would require the approval of the state party’s governing body, which consists of local Republican officials, who would have to decide on the procedures and costs of holding statewide caucuses by a deadline October 2015, according to Politico. It’s no easy task.

Paul’s spokesman Dan Bayens said the senator is “100 percent committed to running for re-election” and his decision on whether to run for president will be made in the spring, Bayens told Politico.

Paul was elected into the U.S. Senate in 2010 and has shown signs of being a likely contender for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination. In response to an invitation to Burning Man 2015 from the Americans for Tax Reform, Paul said he might be too busy to attend the week-long festival in Nevada. “Thank you kindly for the invitation, Grover. I’ll certainly consider it, but I think I might be pretty busy next summer,” Paul said in September.