Rand Paul steps into tech territory, opening office in S.F.

Republican Rand Paul said Thursday he will open a campaign office in a South of Market shared incubator work space, making him the first 2016 presidential candidate to stake a claim to the Silicon Valley tech vote.

“We think it’s an environment that’s conducive to new ideas and innovation — how to find voters, how to sort data, and how to figure out the best way to maximize voting,” he said.

Paul plans to announce the office on Saturday in San Francisco, where he will detail his team’s collaboration with StartupHouse at 934 Howard Street and unveil his campaign’s technology team and its chief technical officer.

The Kentucky senator’s announcement comes in advance of his appearance Saturday in San Francisco at the “Disrupting Democracy” conference co-sponsored by Lincoln Labs, a libertarian-leaning GOP group, and Brigade, a nonpartisan tech firm funded by Facebook founding President Sean Parker that aims to boost civic engagement among younger voters.

Paul said the unorthodox move — opening a Republican campaign office in liberal San Francisco while simultaneously courting conservative voters in Iowa — would have a big payoff that could put the GOP in position to attract “a bigger crowd of people in Silicon Valley than ever before, if I’m the one that wins the nomination.”

Already, Paul said he believes his campaign has made significant moves toward becoming the tech leader among 2016 candidates and that having an office in the country’s tech capital will give him an advantage in the race.

“Having the tech expertise helps anyone,” he said, but addressing “critical issues that attract” tech voters “is something that makes our campaign unique.”

The proof, he said, is that “in the last week or two, we’ve seen polls in purple battleground states like Colorado, Iowa and Pennsylvania — and we’re the only Republican leading Hillary Clinton,” especially with independent voters, he said.

“We’re beating her with independent voters,” he said, and “this gives us an advantage technologically — to try to search out new voters, independent voters that we want to welcome into the GOP.”

Asked if it was politically risky for a Republican candidate to open an office in San Francisco, Paul was unfazed: “The interesting thing is that when I meet the people in Silicon Valley, the first thing they tell me is that they’re more fiscally conservative than most Democrats — and more socially moderate than most Republicans. So I think, really, many people in Silicon Valley would actually be better described as libertarian.

“And I think enough of the issues that I champion are liberty issues — personal privacy, personal responsibility, personal freedom issues,” he said.

Paul defended his opposition to same-sex marriage as part of his libertarian outlook, and said he thinks the government should stay out of people’s private lives.

“While I am conservative socially, and believe in traditional marriage, I’m also one who has said the government should be neutral with regard to ... benefits,” he said. “Really, my preference would be to have the government out of a lot of issues with regard to whether there’s a marriage penalty ... or things like that,” adding that “I’ve never been opposed to private, individual contracts between adults.”

Paul also jabbed at Clinton for her round of strictly private fundraising appearances in San Francisco this week — saying that his campaign is more open to the press and the voting public.

“I sometimes get grief for things that I say, but we talk to the press every day,” Paul said. “And we also talk to the general public — we are pretty open.” That poses risks as other campaigns scour for missteps, he said, but “there’s no way you can encourage new people to come to the cause unless you’re willing to take their questions and be out there.”

“So we’ll see how this strategy works on Hillary Clinton’s side,” he said. “You can see they have a lot they would probably not like to talk about,” he said, including “all the cash (the Clinton Foundation) has been getting from foreign governments.”

Paul’s move for Silicon Valley votes — and his dig at Clinton — drew a sharp response from Democratic National Committee spokesman Eric Walker.

“He says he’ll broaden Republicans’ appeal to Millennials but he would slash Pell Grants, opposed net neutrality rules to keep the Internet fair to all and belittles LGBT rights saying he 'doesn’t believe in rights based on behavior,’” said Walker. “He says he wants to broaden the GOP’s appeal to African Americans and Latinos, but he voiced opposition to the Civil Rights Act and voted against comprehensive immigration reform. We look forward to hearing who he is attempting to reinvent himself to be this weekend.”

Last month, Paul opened a campaign office in another tech capital, Austin, Texas, and on Saturday also will name tech leaders for that office.

Carla Marinucci is The San Francisco Chronicle senior political writer. E-mail: cmarinucci@sfchronicle.com Twitter @cmarinucci