Rand Paul’s Kentucky Senate Opponent Charles Booker Wears Noose In Campaign Ad

Kentucky Democratic Senate nominee Charles Booker released a campaign ad on Wednesday showing him wearing a noose.

The ad shows a noose hanging from a tree and historical images of a Black man being lynched and a flag hanging from a building that reads “A man was lynched yesterday.” Booker, who is Black, narrates, “The pain of our past persists to this day. In Kentucky, like many states throughout the South, lynching was a tool of terror. It was used to kill hopes for freedom.”

“It was used to kill my ancestors,” says Booker, with a noose loosely tied around his neck.

“Now, in a historic victory for our Commonwealth, I have become the first Black Kentuckian to receive the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate,” he continues.

Booker goes on to criticize his Republican opponent, incumbent Sen. Rand Paul, for having “compared expanded health care to slavery.”

In 2011, Paul made that comparison.

“With regard to the idea whether or not you have a right to health care you have to realize what that implies. I am a physician. You have a right to come to my house and conscript me. It means you believe in slavery,” he said. “You are going to enslave not only me but the janitor at my hospital, the person who cleans my office, the assistants, the nurses. … You are basically saying you believe in slavery.”

In the ad, Booker also calls Paul “the person who said he would have opposed the Civil Rights Act.” However, Paul has said he supports the Civil Rights Act.

Booker also called out Paul for having “single-handedly blocked an anti-lynching act from being Federal law.”

Although Paul blocked The Emmett Till Antilynching Act in 2020, he voted for it in 2022 and it became law in March.

The ad plays the sound of a rope getting tighter and Booker says, “The choice couldn’t be clearer.” Booker holds onto the noose and asks, “Do we move forward together? Or do we let politicians like Rand Paul forever hold us back and drive us apart?”

“In November,” says Booker as he removes the knot from his neck, “we will choose healing. We will choose Kentucky.”

Watch above.

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