2,000 miles from home, Rand Paul aids like-minded Idaho governor candidate | McClatchy Washington Bureau

Nearly 2,000 miles from Kentucky, Sen. Rand Paul is hoping to spread his distinctive brand of politics.

The Kentucky Republican has endorsed Rep. Raul Labrador, an Idaho Republican giving up his House seat to run for governor. Labrador will run the state in the Paul mold, unafraid to take on the establishment, the senator explained.

“There is a difference between just being a Republican and being a constitutional conservative,” Paul said. “To me being conservative is more important than any party label.”

Labrador is one of a number of candidates Paul and his political action committee, RANDPAC, are supporting, though the congressman is the only gubernatorial candidate.

Paul acknowledged the endorsement on the state level was “unusual,” but called Labrador exceptional. They both were first elected to Washington in 2010 on what Paul dubbed a “tea party tidal wave.” It swept 87 conservative Republicans into the House and Paul into the Senate.

Paul would like to expand those numbers further.

"Raul has a track record of being an independent thinker and someone who will stand up on principle and we need more of that in the states," Paul said in a recent joint interview with Labrador in his Senate office. "I'm always telling folks in my state, 'Resist, resist, resist when the federal government tries to tell you what to do.' "

Idaho Republican Gov. Butch Otter’s decision not to seek a fourth term has led to one of the most competitive races for governor in decades.

Labrador, Boise businessman Tommy Ahlquist and Otter’s lieutenant governor, Brad Little, are considered the front-runners in the May 15 Republican primary. That contest, open to Republican voters only and likely to draw the most conservative activists, could determine the ultimate victor in reliably-red Idaho, where the last Democrat elected governor was Cecil Andrus in 1990.

Labrador, a member of the House’s conservative Freedom Caucus and a former Idaho House member, is positioning himself as a disruptor, promising to “restore citizen control of our government, buck the establishment, and drain the swamp.”

Ahlquist, a political novice, touts his outsider status and business experience.

Little, a state senator when he was appointed lieutenant governor in 2009, was elected to the position in 2010 and 2014. He enjoys the support of much of the state’s Republican political establishment, including the state’s junior senator, Jim Risch, whose wife, Vicki, is Little’s campaign treasurer.

“We’re in, we’re all in,” Risch said of his support for Little, saying he’d be “ready on Day One.”

He took no offense to Paul’s entry in the state,. “You won’t hear me saying anything negative about any of the other candidates and I suspect that door swings both ways,” Risch said.

Little’s close ties to the party establishment, however, could be viewed as a liability in an election that some are viewing as an opportunity to shake up Boise after a dozen years of Otter.

“If this was old style Idaho, it would be Brad Little’s ‘turn,’ “ said Chuck Malloy, a political columnist for Idaho Politics Weekly. “But Raul and Tommy are having something to say about that. This is probably the hottest contested race since 1978.”

Paul is popular in the state that his father, Ron Paul, energetically wooed in his 2008 and 2012 presidential bids, said Malloy and other political observers in the state. Ron Paul won 24 percent of the vote in Idaho in 2008, his best showing in a primary state. The younger Paul’s pull is probably limited because he attracts the same sort of libertarian-leaning voters that Labrador already draws.

“There’s certainly a libertarian strain in Idaho that certainly he appeals to and his father had significant support,” said Randy Stapilus, co-author of Governing Idaho: Politics, People and Power and a former newspaper reporter and editor. “But it’s not a game changer.”

Paul said he and Labrador share an interest in cutting regulations, lowering taxes and the debt and opposing expansion of government surveillance. Labrador said Paul has had a following in the state since the senator appeared in 2014 at an Idaho Republican Party convention ahead of his 2016 presidential bid. (Paul dropped out of the presidential race after a disappointing showing in the Iowa caucus and did not compete in Idaho.)

“When I go back home and he’s done a filibuster (to protest federal spending) I hear more about that than anything else that’s happening here (in Washington),” Labrador said of Paul’s decision in February to hold up a budget bill and rail on the Senate floor about overspending. “People admire that he’s willing to stand up for what he believes in.”

Like Paul, Labrador voted against last week’s spending bill, saying it was “increasing spending that’s not necessary.” But Rep. Mike Simpson, R-Idaho, who is backing Little, noted the bill included spending to prevent wildfires and to benefit the Department of Energy’s Idaho National Laboratory.

“Some people obviously like the Rand Paul approach but I’m not a fan,” Simpson said.