One thing Republicans did not win in last week’s wave election was Kentucky’s House of Representatives, which is complicating GOP Sen. Rand Paul’s potential plans for a 2016 presidential run.
The state’s Democratically controlled House is unlikely to pass a GOP-backed bill that would allow Paul to appear on the Kentucky ballot for both president and Senate in 2016. They hope, instead, to force him to give up his Senate seat while waging a bid for the White House.
Paul, who is expected to make a 2016 decision in the spring of next year, now faces a couple different options to bypass the state’s unique law, the Cincinnati Enquirer reports.
One is to hope that the secretary of state agrees with Paul’s analysis that the law does not prevent him from appearing on the ballot for two federal offices. (The law currectly states "no candidate's name shall appear on any voting machine or absentee ballot more than once," with the exception being special elections.)
Another is changing Kentucky’s GOP primary to a caucus, since a caucus could be done without a paper ballot.
The least desirable of the options would be simply not appearing on the ballot for president in Kentucky.
Paul is not the only senator up for re-election in 2016 who is also considering a presidential bid. Both Sens. Marco Rubio of Florida and Rob Portman of Ohio have said they would not run both for president and re-election.
-- Andrew Rafferty