Rand Paul (born January 7, 1963, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S.) is an American politician who was elected as a Republican to the U.S. Senate in 2010 and began his term representing Kentucky the following year. He sought his party’s nomination in the U.S. presidential election of 2016.
Rand, the middle of five children, was the son of Ron Paul, a physician who, while serving in the U.S. House of Representatives (1976–77, 1979–85, and 1997–2013), helped swing the Republican Party rightward and toward libertarianism. Rand attended but did not graduate from Baylor University, leaving upon his admission to medical school at Duke University. He earned a medical degree in 1988, and he went on to specialize in ophthalmology. In 1989 he met Kelley Ashby, and they married two years later.
After about 15 years of working in partnerships and clinics, Paul established his own medical practice in Bowling Green, Kentucky. In 1997 he broke away from the medical board with oversight for certification in his field, the American Board of Ophthalmology, and founded a rival certification authority, the National Board of Ophthalmology. The latter group, the board of which was made up entirely of members of his family, disbanded in 2011. He was also active in the Lions Club International, which runs eye banks and offers humanitarian aid related to eye care around the world.
While a college student, Paul was involved in several conservative organizations, and he worked for his father during the 1988 U.S. presidential election, when his father was campaigning on the Libertarian Party ticket. In 1994 Paul founded the antitaxation group Kentucky Taxpayers United, with himself at the head. Two years later he helped his father defeat an “establishment” Republican candidate after the elder Paul decided to run for Congress after an absence of more than a decade.
In 2009, riding a wave of anti-Washington sentiment, Rand Paul took advantage of the unpopularity of incumbent Senator Jim Bunning of Kentucky and announced that he was running for the seat. Bunning subsequently withdrew from the race, and Paul, aligned with the Tea Party movement, won the Republican primary. He then easily defeated the Democratic candidate in the 2010 general election, despite controversy over a campaign trail statement in which Paul questioned the constitutionality of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
With Utah Senator Mike Lee, Paul founded the Tea Party Caucus upon entering the Senate in 2011. He soon became a vocal opponent of his party’s leadership and establishment Republicans. Among the issues he pursued were massive cuts in federal spending. Consistent with his generally libertarian position, Paul’s proposed cuts involved not only social programs but also defense allocations. In addition, he sought the abolishment of all foreign aid. Although Paul generally voted on the losing side in arguments over the budget, he was an influential voice on some issues, such as the government shutdown of 2013. Adopting philosophically consistent but not ideologically rigid positions, he forged unlikely alliances with such groups as the American Civil Liberties Union and with such individuals as Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy, with whom he introduced legislation softening mandatory minimum sentencing penalties in federal cases. In April 2015 Paul announced that he was entering the U.S. presidential election race of 2016. He suspended his campaign in February 2016. He subsequently offered a tepid endorsement for the party’s nominee, Donald Trump, whom he once called “a delusional narcissist and orange-faced windbag.”
After Trump won the presidential election, Paul became increasingly supportive of him, though he occasionally refused to back the administration’s policies. While Paul voted for a massive tax reform bill in 2017, that year he also helped defeat a Republican-led effort to repeal and replace the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA; 2010); he opposed the proposed replacement plan, claiming it was too similar to the PPACA. In November 2017 Paul made additional news when he was attacked by his neighbour, who later pleaded guilty to felony assault; the altercation, which left Paul with bruised lungs and broken ribs, was allegedly motivated by a “yard dispute.”
In 2019 Trump was impeached by the House of Representatives following a whistleblower’s allegation that Trump had extorted a foreign country to investigate one of his political rivals. The proceedings then moved to the Republican-controlled Senate, and Paul made headlines by revealing the alleged whistleblower’s name, despite a law protecting the person’s identity. In February 2020 Paul voted for Trump’s acquittal; the president was acquitted in a near party-line vote. During this time, the coronavirus was spreading around the world, eventually becoming a global pandemic. As schools and businesses closed, the U.S. economy entered an economic downturn that rivaled the Great Depression. In March 2020 Paul became the first senator to test positive for the virus, and he went into a self-quarantine. The following month he resumed his public duties. Paul was elected to a third term in November 2022.
Paul wrote the books The Tea Party Goes to Washington (2011; with Jack Hunter), Government Bullies: How Everyday Americans Are Being Harassed, Abused, and Imprisoned by the Feds (2012; with Doug Stafford), and Taking a Stand: Moving Beyond Partisan Politics to Unite America (2015).