‘We’re going to beat Rand Paul.’ Booker projects hope at first 2022 rally
Charles Booker says he’s confident he will win a seat in the U.S. Senate.
The poll and dollar numbers available this early in the race tell a different story, with Booker behind 16 points in a recent poll and raising a fraction of Sen. Rand Paul’s $7.8 million war chest.
Despite those figures, the assumed Democratic candidate and a crowd of about 100 people buzzed with hope Wednesday night at Booker’s first rally of 2022, held at Kentucky State University.
Students at the Frankfort-based historically Black university gathered near a small stage set up in a campus parking lot to hear the former state representative speak while others tuned in on their car radios, honking as the crowd cheered.
Booker said their hopes fly in the face of preconceived notions observers might have about who Kentuckians will vote for.
“I know that my candidacy is not typical,” Booker said. “It’s not expected that someone like me from where I’m from would do something like this.”
The ‘revival’ candidate?
When asked what he thinks will change from now to Election Day, given his ailing poll numbers, Booker said he’s used to being called an underdog and then outperforming expectations.
“We’re going to beat Rand Paul,” he said. “One thing I know for certain coming from a community that has to deal with poverty, we know how to do a lot with the little. The people of Kentucky are used to being called underdogs. We’re used to being counted out.”
He said that local participation and organization — touting 13,000 volunteers and nearly 100,000 individual contributions — will win the day.
Booker caught a wave once before when he was considered an underdog. His 2020 senate campaign gave a close scare in the primary to former Democratic Senate candidate Amy McGrath, who later suffered a near 20-point trouncing by Sen. Mitch McConnell despite spending more than $90 million.
With viral videos of heartfelt campaign speeches, his “Hood to the Holler” brand, and a proximity to the racial justice reckoning taking place in Booker’s native Louisville and elsewhere in the country, there’s no doubt that Booker caught lightning in a bottle in Spring 2020.
Almost two years later, the son of two pastors says Kentucky “needs a revival,” and that his campaign will provide just that.
Frankfort was the first stop on Booker’s “Kentucky New Deal” drive-in rally tour, with stops also planned in Erlanger, Franklin, Morehead and Paducah.
What is Booker running on?
Along with mentioning his proposed Kentucky New Deal (a platform still scant on details, but includes straightforwardly progressive items like Medicare for All and a Universal Basic Income), Booker foiled his candidacy with Paul’s reelection bid.
He indicated that Paul, who has been a frequent critic of restrictions meant to reduce the spread of COVID-19 transmission and President Joe Biden’s Chief Medical Advisor, was “joking” with people’s lives when it comes to COVID policy.
“We have leaders at the federal level that are joking with our lives, that do not care whether we live or die, that are not worried about the struggles and the challenges that we’ve faced,” Booker said. “... Rand Paul is one of the people that exemplify that problem.”
He added that he thinks Paul “doesn’t care about Kentucky,” pointing out that the politician who moved to the state in the 1990s isn’t “one of us.”
Booker spoke some about the importance of investing fully in places like KSU, which has been the subject of financial scrutiny given a recently discovered major budget shortfall.
More robust federal investment, he said, could end poverty and transform the state’s institutions. He also made reference to President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better Act, a $2.2 trillion social and climate policy bill that has yet to be salvaged after the Senate expressed a lack of needed support.
“If we fight for the structural investments, for our people and our infrastructure — if we support HBCUs like KSU and make sure that the Build Back Better Act moves forward — if we do that we will have strong economies all over Kentucky and all over this country,” Booker said.
Booker added that his own personal story, coming from poverty in Louisville’s West End, makes him a good candidate. He said he’s endured personal hardship — his immediate family has all contracted COVID-19 in the last couple weeks and a 9-year-old cousin was fatally shot two months ago.
The Senate hopeful also addressed the controversial topic of Critical Race Theory, which he said is being weaponized to divide Kentuckians.
“When these folks are talking about Critical Race Theory — when they’re talking about all these things that they don’t know anything about, that they don’t even care to know — it’s a proxy for them holding onto power at our expense,” Booker said. “And when I say ‘our’ I’m talking about the entire commonwealth of Kentucky. From the hood to the holler, we’re all getting screwed.”