Placeholder while loading article actions
Charles Booker, the Democratic candidate challenging Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.), Is wearing a bow in a new campaign ad in which he seeks to highlight the nation’s painful lynching story and Paul’s opposition to a 2020 law to make it a federal country. hate crime.
“The pain of our past persists to this day,” Booker says in the ad. “In Kentucky, like many southern states, lynching was a tool of terror. It was used to kill hopes for freedom.”
The camera pans to reveal a noose around Booker’s neck.
“It was used to kill my ancestors,” he says. “Now, in a historic victory for our Commonwealth, I have become the first black Kentucky to receive the Democratic nomination in the United States Senate.”
“My opponent?” Booker continues, while Paul’s images flicker on the screen. “The person who only blocked an anti-lynching act so that it was not federal law.”
The announcement does not mention that Paul supported an updated bill, known as the Emmett Till Antilynching Act, which was passed in the Senate in March and is now law. Paul put up with the legislation in 2020, saying he was concerned that it might be applied too widely.
In March, Paul acknowledged to the Louisville Courier-Journal that “it was not a popular position to curb this bill” in 2020, but that he still thought it had been right. Paul later co-sponsored the updated bill, which was introduced by Senators Cory Booker (DN.J.) and Tim Scott (RS.C.).
“In the end, I think the language of compromise will prevent us from imprisoning someone for some kind of crime other than lynching,” Paul told the newspaper. “We just wanted to make sure the punishment was commensurate with the crime, and I guess that’s good news that finally worked.”
In a statement Wednesday, Jake Cox, Paul’s deputy campaign manager, suggested that Booker’s announcement was “a desperate misrepresentation of the facts.
“Dr. Paul worked diligently with Senators Booker and Scott to strengthen the language of this legislation and is a co-sponsor of the bill that now guarantees that federal law will define lynching as the absolutely heinous crime it is,” he said. dir Cox.
President Biden signed the Emmett Till Anti-Lynch Act in March, noting that it had taken more than a century of failed efforts to pass a federal law expressly banning lynching.
“For a long time, lynching was pure terror to enforce the lie that not everyone, not everyone belongs to America, not everyone is equal,” Biden said at a Rose Garden ceremony after the signing of the project. law. “Innocent men, women and children hung by the ties of the trees, bodies burned and drowned and castrated. Your crimes? Trying to vote, trying to go to school, trying to have a business, or preaching the gospel. False charges of murder, arson and robbery. Just be black. “
The new law amends the U.S. Code to designate lynching as a hate crime punishable by up to 30 years in prison. More than 4,000 people, mostly African Americans, were lynched in the United States between 1882 and 1968 in every state except a handful. Ninety-nine percent of perpetrators escaped state or local punishment.
Booker and Paul will face each other in the November general election. Paul faced four rivals in the May 17 Republican primary, but won easily. Booker, a former Kentucky state and Louisville native, was unsuccessful in his bid to run for the Democratic Senate in 2020, but also easily won his primary career last month.
Booker’s new ad also appeals to Paul for once he compares expanded health care with slavery and for his earlier criticisms of the Civil Rights Act.
Felicia Sonmez and Eugene Scott contributed to this report.