So Paul sought a private audience with Tom Donohue, the longtime U.S. Chamber president, to offer a personal explanation and apology for his poor choice of words. Paul and his aides tried to set up such a meeting—to no avail. No agreeable time could be found.
It wasn't entirely clear if this was just the typical scheduling snafus of two busy men, or something more. Paul turned to one of his billionaire backers for help: Kentucky coal magnate Joe Craft, a chamber patron and member of the group's board of directors (they both happened to be in Park City, Utah, for the annual reunion of Mitt Romney financiers).
Soon after, at a private meeting of top chamber officials, Craft gave Paul's apologetic pitch and said the senator wanted to deliver his "sorry" in person. A meeting date between Paul and Donohue was set for July.
The truth was, Paul's comments—while relayed almost instantly to the chamber's top brass in Washington—hadn't landed with anywhere near the thud that his political team had feared. Though he's not a classic "Chamber of Commerce Republican" by any stretch, many in the sprawling complex across from the White House appreciate Paul's push to broaden the GOP's brand, especially among minority and young voters.
"No one at the chamber took it personal," said Scott Reed, the chamber's senior political strategist, in an interview over the summer. "He's talking about growing the party. We are grown-ups."
Paul's political team has made a point of reaching out to influencers at the chamber and across Washington to aggressively "correct the record," as they see it, about misconceptions about their boss. Throughout 2014, Paul's media strategist, Rex Elsass, hosted a series of off-the-record dinners at his Capitol Hill home to introduce the Kentucky senator to some of Washington's power brokers. Reed, who managed Bob Dole's 1996 presidential bid, attended one such meal this spring along with Paul, Paul's wife, Kelley, and others that stretched deep into the night.
In other words, Reed had already heard the senator's sales job on expanding the party delivered more artfully and intimately.
On the day Paul was to finally meet with Donohue, he played coy about its significance. "Sometimes I don't know about my meetings until the day of," he said as he hustled through the Capitol corridors. "Or five minutes before."
The apology session apparently went off without a hitch and soon enough, Paul wasn't the one calling, hat in hand. As the summer ended, the Chamber of Commerce was dialing up Paul with a request of its own.
