Rand Paul Makes 2016 White House Bid Official
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Tom Pennington/Getty Images(WASHINGTON) — Sen. Rand Paul has made his 2016 White House bid official, revealing the news on his newly launched presidential campaign website ahead of his scheduled announcement speech at noon Tuesday in Louisville, Kentucky.
“I am running for president to return our country to the principles of liberty and limited government,” the Kentucky Republican is quoted as saying on his campaign website, RandPaul.com.
The website is complete with a testimonial video from his wife, Kelley, in which she lays out why she believes her husband would make a good president.
“Rand has the energy, the ideas, the honesty, to really help restore the prosperity and hope in the country,” Kelley Paul says in the web video. “He loves making a difference as a doctor, and he believes he can make a difference as the president.”
“Being a physician gives Rand a unique perspective in Washington, simply because he’s trained to diagnose a problem and find a solution,” she says of her husband, who is an ophthalmologist by training.
In the video, Kelley tells the story of meeting her husband for the first time over 20 years ago at a party. At first, she says she blew him off, thinking he was only 18 years old.
“He kept trying, he was kind of persistent at the party and he came up to me again a little bit later and we started talking,” Kelley recalls. But she would soon learn that he was actually 26 years old and a surgical intern. “He was very intelligent … and unlike anyone I’d ever met before.”
She goes on to tell the story of Paul’s upbringing, which makes no direct mention of Paul’s famous father — former presidential candidate Ron Paul — and instead focuses on Rand Paul’s relationship to his grandmother, who lost her vision as she aged. Paul was an avid coin collector as a child, and it was a hobby he shared with his grandmother.
“As her eyesight began to fail, he became her eyes to spy the faint mint marks on the coins as they would go through them together,” Kelley says in the video. “Rand never forgot how sad it was for him to watch his grandmother lose her vision and that really cemented for him his desire to be an ophthalmologist.”
Kelley also discusses her husband’s work performing pro-bono surgeries in Guatemala for families who otherwise couldn’t afford corrective eye surgery.
Following Paul’s slated announcement speech at the Galt House Hotel in Louisville Tuesday, the candidate will kick his campaign into high gear, making visits to the first four states in the presidential nominating process over the next four days.
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