GOP presidential candidate Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) on Saturday will launch a campaign presence in the tech community in Silicon Valley—similar to his campaign’s efforts in Austin, Texas—he tells Breitbart News in an exclusive interview.
“It’s a similar type of thing,” Paul said of the Silicon Valley operation of his presidential campaign, as compared to the Austin effort he launched at South By Southwest earlier this year.
The place we’re opening the office is called StartupHouse and in Austin we did a similar thing at what’s called Capitol Factory—it’s where a lot of startup companies go. We thought being around a lot of startup companies and bright individuals it would be a good place for the tech people we’re gathering together to come up with ideas about helping us to find our voters and get them out.
When asked for more details on the tech efforts of his campaign, Paul first joked “that would be top secret and we would have to then kill you or cut your tongue out.”
“But seriously, we’ll be in Phoenix on Friday and we’ll be in San Francisco talking to some of the young, free market tech entrepreneurs and we’ll be announcing our tech council—or group of tech advisers on Saturday as well,” he added.
On Saturday at 3:30 p.m. PT, Paul will be participating in the “Disrupting Democracy” discussion with Lincoln Labs and Brigade at StartupHouse in San Francisco—a forum moderated by the San Francisco Chronicle’s Carla Marinucci.
Paul told the San Francisco Chronicle that he thinks a lot of people in Silicon Valley—which has been traditionally viewed as politically liberal—are actually more libertarian, as he is.
“The interesting thing is that when I meet the people in Silicon Valley, the first thing they tell me is that they’re more fiscally conservative than most Democrats — and more socially moderate than most Republicans,” Paul said. “So I think, really, many people in Silicon Valley would actually be better described as libertarian. And I think enough of the issues that I champion are liberty issues — personal privacy, personal responsibility, personal freedom issues.”
Paul’s trip to Silicon Valley comes on the heels of a ruling by a federal appeals court that President Barack Obama’s National Security Agency (NSA) collecting of Americans’ cell phone data is illegal—a ruling Paul said earlier in this interview with Breitbart News that he’s elated about, and expects the Supreme Court to eventually rule that Obama’s NSA program is illegal and unconstitutional.
In December 2013, the Washington Post laid out how several top technology companies and executives are furious with Obama’s NSA program–giving Paul an edge in those communities since he’s widely viewed as the most critical on either side of the political aisle of such activities by the federal government.
“Well I think I’m the only Republican or Democrat candidate for the presidency who has said that I would end the bulk collection of records on day one,” Paul said in part of his interview on Thursday with Breitbart News, while criticizing former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush–an open supporter of the NSA data collection program.