Rand Paul Takes His Presidential Pitch to South by Southwest

There is nothing cool about running for president, especially if you're a Republican. Begging is by nature degrading and unglamorous, even more so when it's for votes in a half-empty South Carolina VFW hall, or yet another Midwestern Pizza Ranch packed with homeschoolers who want to abolish the Department of Education and use the money to build a moat at the border. GOP candidates don't get to sing on stage with Mick Jagger, or swap wives with George Clooney. The cast of Space Jam never throws any of them a party. Because while Republicans may be many things, hip is not usually one of them.

Rand Paul apparently thinks he can change that. While the rest of the GOP's likely 2016 candidates were slogging through New Hampshire roundtables last weekend, the Kentucky Republican senator was at South by Southwest, partying with Mark Ronson and recruiting tech entrepreneurs for his new office in downtown Austin.

The office, which Rand opened with a ribbon-cutting Monday, will be the hub of Paul's digital operations, laying the groundwork for what his strategists imagine will be the first-ever "crowdsourced presidential campaign." What that means in practice isn't totally clear, but by basing the efforts in Austin, Paul is hoping to tap into the city's startup talent to gain a technological edge going into 2016.

"We're looking to find some of the best and brightest young minds, that's why we go to SXSW: to meet these people," Paul said in an interview with VICE last week. "We've gotten a lot who are very excited about this. We have a good nucleus of people already in Silicon Valley, and we're beginning to form that nucleus… in Austin."

It was the latest stop on what has been a decidedly weird path to Paul's all-but-certain White House bid. For more than a year, the Kentucky Republican has been pitching himself as the tech candidate for 2016, appealing to the bitcoin- and Burning Man–loving libertarians who drive the industry's cult of disruption. South by Southwest was Paul's chance to prove he actually belongs to this techno-futurist clique, and he embraced the opportunity, albeit awkwardly. He Snapchatted and selfied. He asked questions about 3-D printing. He tweeted pictures of the Austin skyline. He did a Meerkat.

Casting himself as a GOP iconoclast amidst a tired presidential field, Paul also talked up his positions on issues like online privacy and regulation, looking for common ground with potential voters at the interactive tech festival. "I think most young people and most people involved in the tech fields are people who believe the government doesn't have the right to look at your stuff without an individualized warrant," he told VICE. "I think that they are horrified by the government mandating these backdoor windows into Facebook and into Google and into various different social media. I would think there is a consensus among these folks that the government has gone too far."

In an interview Sunday with Texas Tribune CEO Evan Smith, Paul laid out his pitch more plainly: "Voters are now no longer Republican or Democrat and no longer neatly fit in one box or the other… We think that people potentially interested in our message are free thinkers, people who think for themselves, people who invent and fly drones around a conference room on the fourth floor."

"It's not just that you're into tech that makes you open to our message, it's if you're part of the leave-me-alone coalition," Paul told Smith. "The leave-me-alone coalition thinks that government doesn't know everything, that government really shouldn't be telling us what to do, for the most part, and that we want to be left alone, whether it's our economic lives or our personal lives."

Of course, it's not clear how any of this—the Snapchats, the networking, the first-ever crowdsourced campaign—will translate into votes for Paul. For one thing, Republicans have gotten crushed by Democratic digital operations in recent elections.

"With all of the data and all of the modeling, there is still some art to this in addition to the science," said Amelia Showalter, the former director of digital analytics for Obama's 2012 campaign. "When I think about Rand Paul getting all of these people from SV, it doesn't mean that those people are going to know exactly what to do—there is still going to be a learning curve. It's easy to think that all you need is the bells and whistles, but you have to use it in service of better connections with the voters."

The bigger question is whether Paul's fantasy coalition of young disrupters actually exists—and whether it would vote for him if it does. Democrats were quick to point out that most recent polls show Paul flagging with young voters, falling behind Hillary Clinton with 18-24 year-olds, and in some surveys, even trailing other likely Republican presidential contenders with that age group.

At this point, Paul doesn't seem phased. "If there are ten Republicans that might be running for president, if nine of them look very similar than it's hard to divide out and find voters who might be sympathetic to your message," he told VICE. "But if one of those candidates happens to be dissimilar in some way that is unique… Then I think that technology and data will help you to get your message to those people."

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