Rand Paul
Randal Howard Paul (born January 7, 1963) is an American politician serving as the junior United States senator from Kentucky since 2011.[1] A member of the Republican Party, he is a son of former three-time presidential candidate and 12-term U.S. representative from Texas, Ron Paul. Paul describes himself as a constitutional conservative and supporter of the Tea Party movement. He has also described himself as libertarian-leaning like his father Ron Paul.[2][3]
Not to be confused with Ron Paul or Paul Rand.
Rand Paul
Paul attended Baylor University and is a graduate of the Duke University School of Medicine. Paul was a practicing ophthalmologist in Bowling Green, Kentucky, from 1993 until his election to the Senate in 2010. He was re-elected to a second term in 2016, and won a third term in 2022.[4]
Paul was a candidate for the Republican nomination in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. He ended his campaign in February 2016 after finishing in fifth place during the Iowa caucuses. While he initially opposed Donald Trump during the 2016 Republican primaries, he supported him following his nomination and became one of his top defenders in the U.S. Senate during his first impeachment trial,[5] though on key votes Paul aligned with Trump the third least among Republican senators during Trump's presidency.[6]
Early life
Randal Howard Paul was born on January 7, 1963, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to Carol (née Wells) and Ron Paul, who is also a politician and physician. The middle child of five, his siblings are Ronald "Ronnie" Paul Jr., Lori Paul Pyeatt, Robert Paul, and Joy Paul LeBlanc.[7][8]
Paul was baptized in the Episcopal Church[9] and identified as a practicing Christian as a teenager.[10]
Despite his father's libertarian views and strong support for individual rights,[10][11] the novelist Ayn Rand was not the inspiration for his first name. Growing up, he went by "Randy",[12] but his wife shortened it to "Rand."[13][14]
The Paul family moved to Lake Jackson, Texas in 1968,[15] where he was reared[16][17] and where his father began a medical practice and for a period of time was the only obstetrician in Brazoria County.[18][15]
When Rand was 13, his father Ron Paul was elected to the United States House of Representatives.[19] That same year, Paul attended the 1976 Republican National Convention, where his father headed Ronald Reagan's Texas delegation.[20] The younger Paul spent several summer vacations interning in his father's congressional office.[21] In his teenage years, Paul studied the Austrian economists that his father respected, as well as the writings of Objectivist philosopher Ayn Rand.[12] Paul went to Brazoswood High School and was on the swimming team and played defensive back on the football team.[10][16]
Paul attended Baylor University from fall 1981 to summer 1984 and was enrolled in the honors program. During the time he spent at Baylor, he completed his pre-med requirements in two and a half years,[22] was involved in the swim team and the Young Conservatives of Texas and was a member of a tongue-in-cheek secret organization, the NoZe Brotherhood, known for its irreverent humor.[23] He regularly contributed to The Baylor Lariat student newspaper.[20] Paul left Baylor without completing his baccalaureate degree,[22] when he was accepted into his father's alma mater, the Duke University School of Medicine, which, at the time, did not require an undergraduate degree for admission to its graduate school. He earned an M.D. degree in 1988 and completed his residency in 1993.[24]
Political activism
Paul was head of the local chapter of the Young Conservatives of Texas during his time at Baylor University.[20] In 1984, Paul took a semester off to aid his father's campaign in the 1984 United States Senate election in Texas, which was eventually lost to fellow Representative Phil Gramm.[20]
While attending Duke University School of Medicine, Paul volunteered for his father's 1988 Libertarian presidential campaign.[21]
In response to the breaking of President Bush's promise not to raise taxes, Paul founded the North Carolina Taxpayers Union in 1991.[21] In 1994, Paul founded the anti-tax organization Kentucky Taxpayers United (KTU), and was chair of the organization from its inception. He has often cited his involvement with KTU as the foundation of his involvement with state politics.[39] The group[40][41] examined Kentucky legislators' records on taxation and spending and encouraged politicians to publicly pledge to vote uniformly against tax increases.[42][43]
Paul managed his father's successful 1996 congressional campaign, in which the elder Paul returned to the House after a twelve-year absence. The elder Paul defeated incumbent Democrat-turned-Republican Greg Laughlin in the Republican primary, despite Laughlin's support from the NRCC and Republican leaders such as Newt Gingrich and George W. Bush.[20]
The Wall Street Journal reported in 2010 that, although Paul had told a Kentucky television audience as recently as September 2009 that KTU published ratings each year on state legislators' tax positions and that "we've done that for about 15 years", the group had stopped issuing its ratings and report cards after 2002 and had been legally dissolved by the state in 2000 after failing to file registration documents.[39]
Paul spoke on his father's behalf when his father was campaigning for office,[44] including throughout the elder Paul's run in the 2008 presidential election, during which Rand campaigned door-to-door in New Hampshire[45] and spoke in Boston at a fundraising rally for his father on the 234th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party.[46]
In February 2014, Paul joined the Tea Party-affiliated conservative advocacy group FreedomWorks in filing a class-action lawsuit charging that the federal government's bulk collection of Americans' phone records metadata is a violation of the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.[47][48][49] Commenting on the lawsuit at a press conference, Paul said, "I'm not against the NSA, I'm not against spying, I'm not against looking at phone records... I just want you to go to a judge, have an individual's name and [get] a warrant. That's what the Fourth Amendment says."[47] He also said there was no evidence the surveillance of phone metadata had stopped terrorism.[47] Critics, including Harvard University law professor Alan Dershowitz[50] and Steven Aftergood, the director of the American Scientists' Project on Government Secrecy,[49] called the lawsuit a political "stunt". Paul's political campaign organization said that the names of members of the public who went to Paul's websites and signed on as potential class-action participants would be available in the organization's database for future campaign use.[47][51]
On the announcement of the filing of the lawsuit, Mattie Fein, the spokeswoman for and former wife of attorney Bruce Fein, complained that Fein's intellectual contribution to the lawsuit had been stolen and that he had not been properly paid for his work.[52] Paul's representatives denied the charge, and Fein issued a statement saying that Mattie Fein had not been authorized to speak for him on the matter and that he had in fact been paid for his work on the lawsuit.[52]
Paul is co-author of a book entitled The Tea Party Goes to Washington (2011)[53][54] and also the author of Government Bullies: How Everyday Americans Are Being Harassed, Abused, and Imprisoned by the Feds (2012).[55] Paul was included in Time magazine's world's 100 most influential people, for 2013 and 2014.[56][57] He is also a contributor to Time magazine.[58]