Despite what his campaign website says — and his past public statements — Kentucky Republican Senate nominee Rand Paul does not want to install an underground electric fence on the border. That’s according to Paul campaign manager Jesse Benton, who told Greg Sargent today that no matter what Paul may have said before, this is the deal: He supports an electronic fence on the border. Just not underground.
A little backstory: Last week, Sam Stein reported on Republican confusion at the plan listed on Paul’s website to build “an underground electric fence, with helicopter stations to respond quickly to breaches of the border.” Here’s what NRSC chair John Cornyn told Stein about the proposal:
“I have not heard that,” the Texas Republican said. “Underground? What would happen? How would that work?”
Today, Benton told Sargent to just ignore all that “underground” stuff.
“The fence Paul envisions, while electronic, is not meant to be underground,” Sargent reports.
“That’s a stupid word that was put in by whoever is writing for our Web site and we need to remove it,” Benton told him.
But as our Jillian Rayfield reported back in May, Paul himself talked about the underground nature of the fence he envisions in an interview with Russian TV.
“Paul also said he’s discussed instituting an ‘underground electrical fence’ on the border to keep out unwanted elements,” Jill reported, “though he emphasized that he’s “not opposed to letting people come in and work and labor in our country.”
Check out the Russian TV interview here:
Evan McMorris-Santoro
Evan McMorris-Santoro has covered politics for TPM since 2009. Before that, he was a reporter at National Journal’s Hotline covering election 2008. He started his career covering local politics at newspapers in TN and his native NC.
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