Labor & Employment Law

Rand Paul: Bloodhounds on His Trail

By Berry Craig

Rand Paul is sticking to his new campaign strategy: Head for the hills when you see union folks with video cameras.

Kentucky’s tea party-tilting Republican U.S. Senate candidate recently stopped in Paducah and Princeton for ?meet and greet? sessions with voters.

But he pulled another speak-and-scram when he spotted a camera-armed contingent of the Kentucky State AFL-CIO’s Bloodhound Brigade, an informal group of union volunteers whose mission, says Nate Byer, AFL-CIO communications director in the Bluegrass State, is to provide information

to voters about when and where they will have the opportunity to engage this candidate for this very important office. Rand Paul says the tea party represents an ?open mike.? But it turns out you are only given a voice if you share Rand Paul’s radical agenda that would devastate Kentucky’s working families.

With Bloodhound Brigade ready to take Paul up on his offer to ?meet and greet? at either stop, Byer says:

Paul rolled into Princeton and Paducah in his massive bus with his face plastered on the sides and North Carolina license plates. He let [Kentucky Senate President] David Williams and [U.S. Rep. Ed] Whitfield speak for him.

Then Paul gave the same six minute speech both places. He didn’t entertain even a thought of answering questions from anybody, just got back on his bus and left.

When he fled union members at earlier campaign stops in Louisville and Pineville, Paul’s getaway vehicle was an SUV (click here for video).  Jeff Wiggins, Kentucky Labor 2010 Zone One coordinator, witnessed Paul’s flight from the Louisville City crowd. Recalls Wiggins:

I thought Forrest Gump was fast. I felt like yelling, ?Run, Rand, run!?

It’s no secret that Paul’s not in the corner of working families. So maybe the doc decamped because he didn’t want to hear queries about a host of anti-worker comments he’s made. Some of the choicest ones are printed?in his own words?on Labor 2010 fliers.

Here’s Paul on unemployment:

Ultimately we do have to sometimes accept a wage that’s less than what we had at our previous job. Nobody likes that, but it may be one of the tough love things that has to happen.

On deadly coal mine mishaps:

Sometimes accidents happen.

On retirees:

Social Security’s a bad investment?.We moved [the retirement age] to 67 gradually. Probably that’s what you need to do again to 70.

Presumably Paul, an ophthalmologist, thinks taking a powder instead of taking questions is the right prescription for victory. Wiggins, a United Steelworkers (USW) member, says it’s bad medicine.

Polls suggest Wiggins is right. Democrat Jack Conway, Paul’s union-endorsed opponent, is surging in some surveys. Adds Kentucky State AFL-CIO President Bill Londrigan:

Rand Paul has totally isolated himself from both the press and the voters of Kentucky. I guess that’s what he meant when he called himself a different kind of candidate. Paul is in his element when he stands in front of a friendly crowd and spouts his empty rhetoric and makes his baseless generalizations.

That’s the same M.O. for all of the tea party Republican bloviators.

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on October 20, 2010 (boomark / email).