Rand Paul Tries to Disrupt SF Liberalism 

The walls of Startup House, the tech industry co-working space in SoMa where Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) appeared for a public panel/campaign event Saturday afternoon, are covered with chalkboard paint, doodles, and techno-utopian messaging. "Live in the future," one mural exhorts.

It doesn't look like a typical campaign office, and, despite widespread reports that Paul would become the first 2016 presidential candidate to open a campaign office in San Francisco by setting up shop at Startup House — it isn't going to be one.

Paul simply paid for a $50 per month membership to Startup House, said Giovanni Barbieri, the manager of the co-working space, before Saturday's event. That means if Paul comes back to San Francisco, he can attend events or work there for free.

Missing out on hosting #PhoneBankForRand events in the small, storefront space on Howard Street probably isn't a great loss for Barbieri, a 25-year-old from Italy. Asked about Paul's presidential candidacy, he responded, "I'm not interested. I can't vote."

Saturday's event, "Disrupting Democracy," was hosted by Lincoln Labs — a "community of individuals who desire to advance liberty in the public square with the use of technology" — and Brigade — the Sean Parker, Marc Benioff, and Ron Conway-backed "civic engagement" startup. The room was packed with a mostly young, mostly male mix of startup dudes and liberty lovers. The preponderance of blazer-clad bodies meant that my only view of Paul came from peeking at the Periscope feed streaming on the "I don't believe the liberal media"-bestickered laptop of a guy sitting next to me in the back.

"This is supposed to be the Periscope election," San Francisco Chronicle political reporter and event-moderator Carla Marinucci said, before prodding Paul to reveal how his campaign plans to reach out to young voters through social media. (His answer: "We use Snapchat more than anyone else out there.")

Paul spent much of his 40-minute appearance at Startup House arguing that his very presence in San Francisco is indicative of his iconoclasm: He's a Republican who can compete for votes in traditionally liberal California because he will appeal to libertarian-leaning tech workers, he claims. "I'm a different kind of Republican, one who respects the entire Bill of Rights," he said.

The argument that Paul could win voters over in Silicon Valley makes sense to Matt Shupe, a campaign consultant whose LinkedIn profile brags that he "organized the largest Republican event in San Francisco in the last 30 years" during his time as executive director of the S.F. Republican Party. Shupe said Paul was in his "top two" picks for the Republican nominee (the other is Scott Walker).

Few of the actual tech workers in attendance were willing to admit to being more than Rand-curious, however, at least not to a reporter. Armando Flores, a freelance web developer and member of Startup House, said, "I'm not all that big on politics, but I like his stance on the NSA."

Mujtaba Badat, another Startup House member and a software developer at a social network for doctors, was disappointed in Paul's lack of support for net neutrality and that he didn't address the issue of visas for highly skilled tech workers. Stephen Cataldo said his politics were more in line with your average San Franciscan, but he came to the event to network and talk up his startup, a social network that will encourage people from opposite ends of the ideological divide to talk politics with each other constructively.

But while Paul emphasized the most progressive-friendly aspects of his beliefs — criticizing civil asset forfeiture, felon disenfranchisement, and bulk collection of metadata by the NSA — he garnered some of his loudest applause of the afternoon by espousing a decidedly conservative position. Asked about his opposition to a bill that would allow people to refinance their student loans, he mocked the idea that college should be free, saying, "That's ridiculous. That's absurd."

Perhaps there are some true Republicans in San Francisco after all.