CINCINNATI - Senator Rand Paul on Friday declared his support for a wide range of criminal justice and voting rights reforms in his latest effort to help improve his and the Republican Party's reputation with black voters.
Mr. Paul's appearance at a conference of the Urban League capped a month in which the junior senator from Kentucky - a top contender for the party's presidential nomination in 2016 - has been aggressively courting black and Democratic backing for his ideas.
'Anyone who thinks that race does not still, even if inadvertently, skew the application of criminal justice, he's just not paying close attention,' Mr. Paul said to applause.
He spoke indignantly of a Kentucky man imprisoned for 55 years for a marijuana offense. 'You can kill someone in Kentucky and get out sooner,' he said. He quoted Malcolm X. 'Nobody can give you equality or justice. If you're a man, you take it.'
Mr. Paul sounded empathetic as he described the arrests of three young black men who he said were simply waiting for a bus. Their apparent crime, he said, was 'waiting while black.'
In an acknowledgment of what was perhaps the biggest cloud hanging over his visit, Mr. Paul delicately touched on the controversy over his 2010 comments in which he suggested that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 encroached on individual liberties.
On Friday, the senator said his support for the act was unequivocal, echoing comments he has made repeatedly since 2010. And he also said he wanted to see a greater role for the federal government in enforcing a second landmark civil rights bill, the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
'Not only do I support the Civil Rights act and the Voting Rights Act,' he said, 'I'm a Republican who wants to restore a federal role for the government in the Voting Rights Act.'
Adapt the Voting Rights Act to the barriers people face today in voting has become a contentious political question since the Supreme Court struck down a central element of the act last year and left it up to Congress to try and find a remedy.
Mr. Paul spoke not just of voting rights reform but also of criminal justice reform. While he was addressing the Urban League, his office announced that he had introduced a bill that would eliminate the disparity in sentencing law that treats the use of crack cocaine much more harshly than the use of other drugs. Crack cocaine has been more popular in black neighborhoods.
'Our nation has come a long way since the civil rights movement,' he said. 'But we must realize that race still plays a role in the enforcement of the law.'
While Mr. Paul has been trying to forge deeper connections to black communities - visiting black churches, historically black colleges and universities and influential organizations like the Urban League - his challenges in overcoming perceptions about him and his party were apparent on Friday.
The seats in the hall were only about one third full while he spoke. And after he was finished, a woman circulated in the crowd passing out an op-ed article from The Cincinnati Enquirer headlined 'Blacks shouldn't be fooled by Rand Paul.'
Mr. Paul also touched on education reform and said people in poor areas needed greater school choice through vouchers. In doing so, he could not resist taking a swipe at President Obama.
'They say education is the great equalizer,' he said. 'But all schools are not equal. My kids went to great public schools. I went to great public schools. The president's kids go to great private schools.'
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