The Democrat challenging Kentucky Senator Rand Paul for his seat released a shocking new campaign advertisement on Wednesday featuring himself with a noose around his neck.

Former state lawmaker Charles Booker, who is black, used the imagery to criticize Paul for previously blocking an anti-lynching bill that had passed the House of Representatives in 2020. 

It's worth noting that Paul was among the co-sponsors of the Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act in March, which passed the Senate with unanimous consent.

In the video, Booker also goes after Paul for previously stating that belief in the universal right to healthcare means 'you believe in slavery,' and brings up the Republican senator's criticisms of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. 

The roughly one-minute commercial begins with a 'strong imagery' warning in a nod to its controversial nature before opening on an image of a hanging noose.

'The pain of our past persists to this day,' Booker says in a voiceover as an image of a noose hanging outside of the US Capitol on January 6 last year is shown.

'In Kentucky, like many states throughout the south, lynching was a tool of terror. It was used to kill hopes for freedom.'

Meanwhile, images flash across the screen of a public lynching and an announcement celebrating the horror.

Then Booker's face fills the screen, the rope now on his neck.

'It was used to kill my ancestors,' he says solemnly. 

The former Kentucky state legislator then touts the 'historic' nature of his primary victory, declaring 'I have become the first black Kentucky to receive the Democratic nomination for US Senate.'

The screen shifts to a slightly-smiling Paul while Booker continues, 'My opponent? The very person who compared expanded healthcare to slavery.'

'The person who said he would have opposed the Civil Rights Act. The person who single-handedly blocked an anti-lynching act from the federal law,' Booker says.

'The choice couldn't be clearer. Do we move forward together? Or do we let politicians like Rand Paul forever hold us back, and drive us apart?' 

He removes the noose at the end of the video, concluding with a call for voters to turn out for this year's midterm elections.

'In November, we will choose healing. We will choose Kentucky,' Booker says.

Booker became the first black Kentuckian to win a Democratic primary for US Senate this year, after being defeated by fellow Democrat Amy McGrath in 2020.

McGrath went on to lose against Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell.

While his comments on Paul's opposition to a federal anti-lynching bill may be outdated, the Kentucky junior senator did make some questionable comments about healthcare and slavery during a 2011 Senate hearing.

'With regard to the idea of whether you have a right to health care, you have to realize what that implies. It’s not an abstraction. I’m a physician. That means you have a right to come to my house and conscript me. It means you believe in slavery,' Paul said at the time.

'It means that you’re going to enslave not only me, but the janitor at my hospital, the person who cleans my office, the assistants who work in my office, the nurses.'

He also dismissed the universal right to basic healthcare as a 'guarantee of physical comfort' which Paul said the Constitution did not provide.

In 2013, Paul denied being against the Civil Rights Act during remarks in front of an audience at Howard University, a historically black college. 

But the Republican still looks to have a lead in the state - Booker trails Paul by 16 percentage points in the most recently available poll data, from January. 

Paul has also far out-raised Booker in this election cycle in typical incumbent fashion - the senator ended April having raised more than $20 million and with $8.6 million still on-hand.

Booker brought in nearly $3.4 million in total, ending with just under half a million dollars on-hand.