Ron Paul

Ron Paul is an American physician and politician whose 30-year congressional career — across his 1976–1977, 1979–1985, and 1997–2013 service as a U.S. Representative for Texas — and three presidential campaigns (1988 Libertarian Party, 2008 Republican Party, 2012 Republican Party) produced one of the most-influential American libertarian political movements of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. He was born Ronald Ernest Paul on August 20, 1935, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, into a German-American family. His father Howard Caspar Paul was the owner of a small dairy business, and his mother Margaret Dumont was a homemaker.

His education at Gettysburg College (B.S. in Biology, 1957) and Duke University School of Medicine (M.D., 1961) launched his early-career path. His 1963–1965 U.S. Air Force flight surgeon service and his subsequent Air National Guard service produced his early-career military path. His 1968 relocation to Lake Jackson, Texas, launched his obstetrician-and-gynecologist private practice — across which he delivered approximately 4,000 babies through the late 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s.

His April 1976 special-election victory for the Texas 22nd congressional district U.S. House seat launched his political career. His congressional positions — particularly his consistent opposition to federal-budget deficits, the Federal Reserve System, the Vietnam War (as a Vietnam-era veteran), and the U.S. military interventions in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya — established his libertarian political profile.

His 1988 Libertarian Party presidential campaign (which produced approximately 432,000 votes) and his 2008 and 2012 Republican Party presidential primary campaigns (which produced 21 percent and 22 percent of Republican primary votes, respectively) launched the early-21st-century American libertarian political movement — particularly the Tea Party movement of 2009–2012 and the subsequent Liberty Movement of the 2010s. His son Rand Paul has served as the U.S. Senator for Kentucky since 2011. He retired from the U.S. House of Representatives in January 2013. He has been with American homemaker Carol Wells since 1957, and the couple has five children (including Senator Rand Paul).

His name Ron is the English short form of Ronald (from the Old Norse Rögnvaldr meaning "ruler's counselor"). Ron was a popular American boys' name through the mid-20th century.