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Republican Leaders Await Details on Presidential Caucus

Republican leaders in Kentucky are still figuring out whether a presidential caucus next year is feasible.

The vote allowing Senator Rand Paul to run for both his seat in the Senate and the White House is less than two months away, but many details still need to be hammered out.

Scott Lasley is the chair of a special committee created by the Republican Party of Kentucky. The group is working to plan how a presidential caucus in 2016 would work. Lasley’s plan will eventually need approval from state party leaders, and he says it’s not a sure thing yet that this idea will get approved.

"I think a lot of people are still waiting to hear the details in terms of what the process is going to look at and what it's going to entail," comments Lasley.

Among those Republican state leaders waiting for details is Jim Skaggs.

"The two things I am most concerned with is that we make it fair and accessible to all registered Republican voters and that the cost is somehow covered," Skaggs states.

The whole effort is aimed at coming up with a system that would allow Senator Rand Paul to run for both president and his current seat in the U.S. Senate next year, but the state party would have to foot the bill for a caucus. So far, Paul’s campaign has said it would help defray the costs if the caucus is approved.

There’s also the issue of getting county party chairs around the state to agree to this plan. County chairs would be in charge of carrying out the caucus.

Both Lasley and Skaggs say there is support among party leaders to figure this out, though. For one, a caucus would make Kentucky stand out during the election, and it could possibly help get one of the state’s most prominent politicians in the White House.

Ashley Lopez is a reporter forWGCUNews. A native of Miami, she graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a journalism degree.