Rand Paul Runs Ad Showing Charles Booker Calling to Defund Police

U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Kentucky, is targeting his Democratic challenger in the weeks leading up to Election Day in Kentucky.

Paul, who is seeking a third 6-year term in the United States Senate, is on television across the commonwealth with a new ad featuring his opponent Charles Booker, in his own words, advocating to defund the police.

“I think now is the time that we need to actually do that work,” Booker says in a clip pulled from an MSNBC interview when asked about defunding the police.

Pastor Jerry Stephenson of the Midwest Church of Christ in Louisville is also front and center in the new ad, saying “Booker is aligning himself with a fringe element that has no place in the African American community.”

“The only thing that it does is divide and bring strife in the community.”

The ad also includes testimony from Navada and Krista Gwynn who in 2019 lost their son to a drive-by shooting in Louisville, and then in 2021 experienced the trauma of their daughter being shot in the knee at a city park.

“There’s people out here like me that need the police,” Navada Gwynn says, adding, ” and Charles Booker is not the answer.”

Booker recently called for fully funding community safety in a KET interview.