LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- In his first sit-down interview since launching his U.S. Senate campaign, former State Representative Charles Booker told WDRB News he did consider running for mayor of Louisville.
“I did think about it. I prayed about it,” he said. “I love this city. This is my home. All of my family is from here. Our problems are real.”
But Booker said he decided the real power to address those problems is in Washington D.C., and that incumbent Republican Sen. Rand Paul was standing in the way of change.
"So, I think we should just get rid of him and put someone in office who's going to fight for us for a change," he said.
Booker, a progressive who was born and raised in west Louisville, believes he can build a coalition of urban and rural support around common issues such as healthcare, poverty, and infrastructure.
“If you look across any metric that would determine good quality of life, Kentucky is at the bottom of damn near all of them. It's hurting folks in the west end, the south end, and Paducah, and Pikeville.”
Booker believes he can win support despite disagreements over social issues such as abortion.
"This isn't about finding a situation where we agree on everything. That isn't even a rational expectation," he said. "The majority of issues we have so much in common. So, we're going to disarm those wedge issues."
But Paul argues that Booker is just too liberal for Kentucky.
"I just don't think it's going to be very popular to want to defund the police. I don't think most Kentuckians think that somehow infrastructure is reparations for slavery or that somehow Kentuckians need to pay reparations for slavery," Paul told reporters in June.
Booker said Paul is "trying to scare folks."
But Booker said he does support using more resources to prevent crime and to fund alternatives to police.
"Fully funding community safety doesn't mean we don't have men and women in uniform that can come to our aid when we need help," Booker said. "It just means that if someone is having a mental health crisis, the person that's coming to see them is not coming to shoot them."
Booker does not back down from his support of reparations for slavery.
"We can direct resources to communities that have been robbed because we had an economy that was built on folks working for free - and that's what reparations is about," he said.
But with Democratic Socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders holding a rally for Booker in May, Republicans are tagging Booker with the socialist label.
"The crazy thing about it is these Republicans are socialists for the corporations," he said. "It's another boogie man word. It's another way to say be afraid of the government working for you."
If Booker gets past Democratic primary in May of 2022, and then beats Paul next fall, he will be the first Kentucky Democrat to win U.S. Senate seat since Wendell Ford in 1992.
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