A New ‘Pro-Rand Paul’ Super-PAC is Making Paul’s Official Super-PAC Nervous
U.S. Senator Rand Paul, a Republican from Kentucky and presidential candidate, listens during a campaign stop in Atkins, Iowa, U.S., on Saturday, April 25, 2015.
Photographer: Daniel Acker/BloombergThe phone calls were confounding, until they multiplied. People at the top of Kentucky Senator Rand Paul's network were being asked about a new group that wanted to turn donations into campaign wins. What, they asked, was the Concerned American Voters super-PAC?
The short answer: A headache. The new iteration of the CAV super-PAC is the child of a movement that mostly helps but sometimes bedevils Rand Paul. It was relaunched this week, with much fanfare, when long-time FreedomWorks CEO Matt Kibbe announced that he'd left the Tea Party group to become a senior PAC advisor. The new PAC would try to organize Iowa for Paul, starting with 40-full time organizers. Kibbe's goal, he told reporter Byron Tau, was to prevent 2016 from being another "train wreck for the GOP" by out-organizing the Republican establishment.