Kentucky Senator Rand Paul is living up to his promise to run for president as a “different kind of Republican.” His campaign appears to have decided that he can win the nomination without even basic help from party bosses, and that if he comes up short his loss should not serve to strengthen their infrastructure.
Several presidential candidates are likely to sign contracts allowing them to simultaneously receive voter profiles from both the Republican National Committee and i360, a rival data warehouse managed by the political network associated with Koch Industries. Paul, however, seems to be following a different path—one that will allow him to maintain full control of any data collected by his campaign or affiliated super-PAC and set up a distinct power base beyond 2016 entirely independent of the Republican Party.
Paul is the only one of the party’s candidates trying to assemble a full-fledged presidential campaign who has refused to sign a so-called data agreement with the RNC. This is a standard arrangement in both parties, designed to permit candidates to benefit from one of few durable resources in American politics: a national party’s voter database. In exchange for access to it, candidates pledge that after the election they will enrich the database by returning intelligence gathered on the electorate through their interactions with individual voters.