Rand Paul continued his forays into Democratic strongholds with a one-day stop in San Francisco on Saturday. He spoke to a crowd of 100 young techies at StartupHouse, a space where entrepreneurs–and, soon, the Paul campaign–rent out space.
“Some people want to know what the hell is a Republican doing in San Francisco,” Paul admitted. “What we want is a government that leaves us alone.”
“There are a lot of folks in Silicon Valley who say, ‘You know what? Enough is enough,'” he said, according to Bloomberg.
“The reason I’m in San Francisco is I want to be a different kind of Republican,” Paul said, promising to end NSA spying. “I also think people who voted for President Obama was because they thought he was a civil libertarian.”
Although the crowd was receptive to some of his pro-privacy, pro-drug reform talking points, the San Francisco Chronicle noted that, on the topic of net neutrality, his remarks fell flat.
On the controversial issue of “fast lanes,” which net neutrality aims to ban, Paul attempted to draw an analogy to road pricing. “The market’s always differentiating on amounts, and it’s always differentiating on speed,” he said. “If I’m driving from Nashville to Louisville and I want all the road, you might have to pay extra for that. If you’re talking about banning the marketplace, that’s a mistake.”
“The government didn’t create Facebook and the government didn’t create Google,” he said, arguing that government regulation will only serve to stifle innovation. The Chronicle observed that these lines were “met largely with silence.”
His most popular lines targeted the drug war and the Patriot Act. “I don’t want anybody shot for having marijuana in their house,” he said, to applause.
He also discussed criminal justice reform, saying the GOP could win more voters by being the party of not just the Second Amendment, “but also the Fifth and Sixth Amendment.”
This trip was just one of many unconventional stops for the Paul campaign. Last year he made waves by speaking at Berkeley, where he received a standing ovation.
Earlier this year, while other 2016 candidates spent time in New Hampshire, Paul flew to South by Southwest in pursuit of the “leave-me-alone coalition.”
“People keep asking me: Why are you in Texas and not in New Hampshire?” Paul told Bloomberg News. “Well, because I think if you want talent you’ve got to go to where the talent is.”
