Progressive Charles Booker launches bid to unseat Rand Paul

Former Kentucky state Rep. Charles Booker will launch a bid to unseat Sen. Rand Paul, he announced.

The 37-year-old rose to national prominence last year when he narrowly lost the Democratic primary to take on Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to Amy McGrath, a former Marine combat pilot who ran as a moderate and was defeated.

At the same time that Booker was campaigning, 26-year-old Breonna Taylor, a black woman, in Louisville, Kentucky, was shot and killed in a botched police raid that sparked outrage and racial justice protests nationwide.

Booker, a progressive who openly supports “Medicare-for-all” and the Green New Deal, became actively involved in the protests, gaining him the endorsements of Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), as well as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY).

This time around, Booker announced his candidacy in a two minute video posted to his social channels, where he stressed all of his connections to the Bluegrass State: good and bad.

The Senate hopeful, who is black, discusses coming from “a long line of Kentuckians. I’ve had ancestors who were enslaved in this commonwealth,” before turning to his socioeconomic message.

“We can make freedom mean that every community across Kentucky is thriving with good-paying union jobs. That we’re not just working to struggle less, but that we’re owning, we’re creating, we’re building pathways to wealth all over Kentucky.”

Booker grew up poor in an inner-city Louisville neighborhood.

His trademark slogan “from the hood to the holler” is based on the notion that poor rural whites face many of the same generational economic challenges he did.

“As we go into this day where we celebrate our independence, let us commit to making it mean something,” Booker said while announcing his candidacy. “And I’m not just asking that of you. I’m going to lead by example. And it’s with that understanding that we have to lead ourselves that I’m going to run for United States Senate.”

For his part, Paul has certainly made black Kentuckians, which account for eight percent of the state’s population, a priority thus far in his Senate career.

As details emerged about the circumstances surrounding Taylor’s killing, the Kentucky senator introduced the Justice for Breonna Taylor Act to prohibit no-knock warrants, which allow authorities to forcibly enter a home without announcing their authority or purpose.

The raid that killed Taylor, an EMT with no criminal record, was conducted under the authority of a no-knock warrant.

Paul said at the time that he made the decision to introduce the bill after speaking with Taylor’s grieving family.

As for Booker, Paul said in a statement after he launched his candidacy that, “I just don’t think defunding the police and forcing taxpayers to pay for reparations will be very popular in Kentucky.”

With Post wires