Ashley Bell, a rising young Democrat who spoke at the party’s 2008 national convention, made headlines in 2010 when he announced his switch to the Republican party. Now, the prominent black Republican is switching teams once again.
Bell is shifting his presidential endorsement of Rand Paul to the Kentucky senator’s colleague, Marco Rubio. Both Rubio and Paul are vying for the Republican nomination, but Rubio has seen a surge in support in recent weeks.
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“Rand is a good man and he’s right on the issues … but in my personal opinion I think right now the party needs to unify behind someone who’s not divisive, someone who can speak to the largest segment of the American people,” Bell told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution during a recent interview.
“I want to support a campaign that can do both – continue to talk about their core values and things they fundamentally stand for, but also be able to raise a campaign that’s national and be able to credibly take the message to Republican voters who are voting in this primary,” he said.
Bell added, “I think Rubio has a better ability to do that.”
Rubio, who’s one of two Cuban-American senators in the GOP presidential field, has risen to third place both nationally and in the three earliest primary states, according to polling data by RealClearPolitics. He currently tops the Washington Examiner’s presidential power rankings while Paul comes in eighth.
Paul has been plagued by consistently low poll numbers and fundraising difficulties. Though many said the libertarian-leaning senator delivered a persuasive performance in the fourth GOP debate after sparring with his rivals over defense spending, it was Rubio, not Paul, who was widely dubbed the winner the next day.
Bell’s initial decision to support Paul stemmed from his support for criminal justice reform, an issue the Kentucky senator has made central to the platform for his presidential bid. The Georgia native and former county commissioner now serves as co-chairman of 20/20 Leaders of America, a bipartisan group of black elected officials. The group is slated to host a presidential forum in Columbia, S.C. from Nov. 21-22 featuring Republican Ben Carson and Democrats Bernie Sanders and Martin O’Malley.
Despite endorsing Rubio, Bell offered high praise for Carson for opting to participate in the forum.
“If every Republican campaign was like Ben Carson’s, we wouldn’t have the problem we have in general elections,” he said, adding that Carson “is unafraid to try to win the black vote, a total opposite from what we’ve seen in the past in a primary.”
Rubio’s campaign plans to send a campaign surrogate to the event, according to Bell.
