Alaska Dispatch News - Presidential Candidate Rand Paul Wants to Leave Alaskans Alone

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By Erica Martinson

In a full hotel ballroom in downtown Anchorage Tuesday morning, about 200 people erupted into applause for a senator who traveled more than 4,000 miles from Washington, D.C., to preach about leaving them alone.

"So I stood on the Senate floor for 10 1/2 hours -- my feet are still sore …to defend your right to be left alone," said Sen. Rand Paul, R-Kentucky, who is running for the Republican nomination to be president of the United States. This spring, Paul took to the Senate floor to filibuster renewal of the Patriot Act, a George W. Bush-era surveillance law. He was ultimately unsuccessful in stopping the government from gathering phone records, but he hasn't given up on the idea.

This week Paul veered off the usual course for presidential candidates and headed west, away from early primary states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina that dominate early campaign stops. He landed in Anchorage late Monday night, and held a fundraising breakfast first thing Tuesday morning.

Paul's Anchorage stop was his first in the state -- he caught a plane to Fairbanks immediately after a speech at the downtown Sheraton. He planned to continue his trip across the West, to Washington, Idaho, Wyoming and Utah. States, he said, that share "the same sort of independent, rugged individualism."

That individualism resonates with Paul's message about what he says can do for Alaskans: "Get the government to leave you alone. Get the government out of your personal and business lives. Have the government quit collecting all of your phone records. And then have the government primarily involved with defending the country."

Paul said his message stands in contrast to President Barack Obama, who will touch down in Alaska next week to talk, in part, about climate change.

Paul, who hails from Kentucky, argued that the Obama administration "went after the coal mining industry," and "they're going to come after the oil and gas industry next."

He pointed to Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, saying that "she's not really for allowing much drilling in Alaska," referring to Clinton's recent statements opposing Arctic drilling. "I'm a big believer in allowing Alaska to make a lot of these decisions … Get the federal EPA out of here," Paul said.

More than 200 people gathered in the hotel meeting room Tuesday morning to hear the diminutive Paul, wearing a checked shirt, jeans and boots, talk about protecting individual liberty and carving back the size and power of the federal government.

Volunteers passed out posters that said "unleash the American dream" to a crowd that varied widely in age -- some long-time supporters, others merely curious, still more working on deciding among the crowded Republican field, which Paul jokingly referred to as "55 candidates" deep.

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's parents, Chuck and Sally Heath, were in the crowd. So far, they are undecided, the pair said in a private room where Paul met with the Heaths and reporters after the rally.

Paul isn't just focused on state's rights -- he has a state-based plan to overcome a struggling campaign. And it involves Alaska.

"Alaska also has an independent, libertarian spirit, and I think there's a great deal of resonating of our message up here. There's a groundswell and a movement already here, so we want to get that organized, be the first up here, and capture the vote in Alaska," he said.

Alaska has "almost as many delegates as Iowa does," Paul said in an interview after the rally.

That depends on the meaning of "almost." States each send 10 delegates to the Republican convention, plus three more for each congressional district. That means Iowa gets 22, while Alaska has 13.

Nevertheless, Paul's point is that "the nomination is a long process and you've got to get delegates individually by state."

And while there are four primaries in February, there are 25 primaries and caucuses in the first half of March, Paul said. That includes Alaska's March 1 "presidential preference poll," where he hopes to scoop up support before the rest of the contenders.

Nationally, Rand Paul is running an average eighth place -- pulling 4.3 percent of voters -- among Republican contenders. He trails behind real estate magnate Donald Trump, Gov. Jeb Bush and his Senate colleagues Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, among others.

Paul hoped his message will resonate in Alaska, and touted himself as best suited to defend the right to guns, privacy, limited taxes and government.

You can't defend the Second Amendment if you don't defend the Fourth Amendment, Paul said, touting the importance of personal privacy.

"If you want to know if I defend the Second Amendment -- don't come in my house unannounced," he said.

A pledge to keep the government out of churches garnered big applause, as did remarks lambasting Planned Parenthood.

The crowd clapped loudly for Paul's exhortation of the nation's criminal justice system. Some "of our kids make mistakes with drugs, but putting them in jail for a decade or 20 years or life for making a mistake with drugs is wrong, and I think we ought to give our kids a second chance when they make mistakes," he said.

And Paul dug into federal regulatory agencies, and federal criminal enforcement, which he said is out of control.

"We've let government go too far," he told the crowd.

He urged state control over environmental issues -- "You think Alaska might be able to figure out what is a wetland and what isn't a wetland?" Paul asked. And Paul touted a flat tax -- 14.5 percent for both personal income and businesses.

The crowd at the Sheraton in Anchorage included supporters that came to Paul from a variety of causes. T-shirts included support for his father, Ron Paul, "father of the Tea Party," anti-surveillance activists ("don't drone me bro"), and anti-abortion activists of the "abolitionist" movement.

Kelley Griffin, 56, of Wasilla, said she considered Paul more of a senator from Alaska than the ones she has now.

Dirk Tanner, 42, of Anchorage, was at the speech and is a longtime Paul supporter. "Because he has courage. I believe that he is not afraid to do what he thinks is right against opposition" Tanner said.

"There's the fact that we're ruining our economy through multiple ways -- one of them being all these overseas interventions and wars, and he talked about bailing out corporations and the millions of dollars people pay to avoid paying taxes, while the rest of us people who can't really afford to pay are forced to pay the full amount. It's just sort of pressure from above and pressure from beneath that's squeezing the vitality out of the American economic system," Tanner said.

"We are getting clobbered. We are chasing American jobs and American companies overseas," Paul told the crowd Tuesday.

And he argued that any old Republican won't do the trick: "Government is so big and the inertia is so strong," he said. "You get an establishment Republican up there, they're going to be a little better than the Democrats. But are they really going to change the direction of government? The last time we had Republicans in office, we doubled the debt ... So this is about honesty. It is about sincerity. It's about who will actually change the direction of government."

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