When Rep. Thomas Massie drove up to the Capitol to support his Kentucky GOP colleague Sen. Rand Paul’s bid to halt provisions of the Patriot Act, the congressman’s car turned heads.  

Massie drives a sleek black Tesla — the electric car from entrepreneur Elon Musk’s automaker. He explained that unlike traditional gasoline-powered automobiles, his transportation of choice will effectively run on coal, a natural resource that has long driven the Kentucky economy.  

But Massie’s timber-frame house, for which he cut and milled his own lumber , runs on solar power and exists off the grid, literally. So, he cannot charge his Tesla at home while there’s a lot of other stuff running at the same time.  

The car has a “Friend of Coal” Kentucky license plate and a “Stand With Rand” magnetic sign. And the license plate number? “NDFED.” That’s another area of common ground between Massie and Paul. So, it was no surprise when Massie formally endorsed the commonwealth’s junior senator for president at a rally over the weekend.  

When the Senate’s votes finished for Sunday evening, with Paul assured that his actions would lead to a lapse in the three surveillance powers, including the bulk collection of phone records by the National Security Agency, Paul and Rep. Justin Amash, R-Mich., strolled across the East Front with Massie to the spot where the Tesla was parked and the three lawmakers drove off together.  

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