Rand Paul biography

Synopsis

Early Life

Born Randal Howard Paul on January 7, 1963, Rand Paul is the third of five children born to Ron Paul—a U.S. Congressman and 2012 Republican presidential candidate—and his wife, Carol. Like his siblings, Paul was baptized and raised Episcopalian. In 1965, when he was still a toddler, the family moved from Pittsburgh to San Antonio, Texas, and eventually settled in the Texas town of Lake Jackson.

Paul attended Baylor University and then the Duke University Medical School, his father's alma mater. After receiving a medical degree in 1998, Paul pursued a general surgery internship at the Georgia Baptist Medical Center in Atlanta, Georgia. While there, he met Kentucky native Kelley Ashby. The couple dated for a couple of years and married in 1991, and when Paul finished his ophthalmology residency at Duke two years later, they moved to Bowling Green, Kentucky to start a family and Paul's medical practice. They soon had three sons, William, Duncan and Robert.

A longtime member of the service organization Lions Club International, Paul founded the Southern Kentucky Lions Eye Clinic, a nonprofit offering free eye care to patients in need, in 1995. He also performed free eye surgeries for impoverished children in developing countries through the Children of the Americas program.

Entry into Politics

A lifelong Republican with Libertarian leanings, Paul became involved in political causes in 1994, when he founded Kentucky Taxpayers United, a watchdog group tracking taxation and spending issues in the Kentucky state legislature until it disbanded in 2000. Rand was inspired to become involved in politics, in part due to his father, Ron Paul, who was the first member of the Paul family to run for and win political office. His father served the state of Texas in the U.S. House on three separate occasions, beginning in 1976. Ron Paul became nationally famous by running for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008, after running twice in the presidential election as a Libertarian candidate. Though his candidacy was ultimately unsuccessful, Ron Paul's Libertarian platform attracted a small, but passionate, following. Rand occasionally filled in for his father on the campaign trail, offering populist speeches that echoed his dad's small-government beliefs.

In the wake of the September 2008 American economic crisis, Rand Paul became active in the Kentucky branch of the burgeoning, nationwide anti-tax movement known as the Tea Party.