Rand's Growing KY Problem

The National Journal's Josh Kraushaar explains:

Paul’s reelec­tion is now squarely on the minds of the Na­tion­al Re­pub­lic­an Sen­at­ori­al Com­mit­tee, which is hop­ing that the fresh­man sen­at­or re­fo­cuses his at­ten­tion on the Sen­ate race soon­er than later. One ma­jor con­cern is that if Edelen wins reelec­tion as state aud­it­or, he could quickly pivot to a Sen­ate race and spend nearly three months cri­ti­ciz­ing Paul for be­ing ab­sent from the state—a nonideo­lo­gic­al line of at­tack that Paul would be ill-suited re­spond­ing to as a pres­id­en­tial can­did­ate. With the Iowa caucuses and New Hamp­shire primar­ies not un­til Feb­ru­ary, Edelen could ad­vance a nar­rat­ive on Paul’s ab­sent­ee­ism that could be chal­len­ging to re­verse. One Mc­Con­nell ad­viser feared a worst-case scen­ario in which Paul would be badly dinged “by a thou­sand cuts” be­fore he even re­com­mit­ted his at­ten­tion to the Sen­ate cam­paign.  Paul only has $1.4 mil­lion in his Sen­ate cam­paign ac­count; he’s not leg­ally al­lowed to trans­fer money raised for a pres­id­en­tial race back to a Sen­ate race.