Ron Paul

Paul argued for a return to the gold standard maintained by the U.S. from 1873 to 1933, and with Senator Jesse Helms convinced the Congress to study the issue.

Ronald Ernest Paul (born August 20, 1935) is an American author, activist, physician and retired politician who served as the U.S. representative for Texas's 22nd congressional district from 1976 to 1977 and again from 1979 to 1985, as well as for Texas's 14th congressional district from 1997 to 2013.

Ronald Ernest Paul was born on August 20, 1935, in Pittsburgh, the son of Howard Caspar Paul (1904–1997), who ran a small dairy company, and Margaret Paul (née Dumont; 1908–2001).

His paternal grandfather emigrated from Germany, and his paternal grandmother, a devout Christian, was a first-generation German American.

He has four brothers.

As a junior at suburban Dormont High School, he was the 200-meter dash state champion.

Paul Went to Gettysburg College, where he was a member of the Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity.

He graduated with a B.S. degree in Biology in 1957.

While a medical resident in the 1960s, Paul was influenced by Friedrich Hayek's The Road to Serfdom, which caused him to read other publications by Ludwig von Mises and Ayn Rand.

He came to know economists Hans Sennholz and Murray Rothbard well, and credits his interest in the study of economics to them.

Paul earned a Doctor of Medicine degree from Duke University's School of Medicine in 1961, and completed his medical internship at the Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit and his residency in obstetrics and gynecology at Magee-Womens Hospital in Pittsburgh.

Paul served as a flight surgeon in the U.S. Air Force from 1963 to 1968, and worked as an obstetrician-gynecologist from the 1960s to the 1980s.

Paul served as a flight surgeon in the United States Air Force from 1963 to 1965 and then in the United States Air National Guard from 1965 to 1968.

Paul and his wife then relocated to Texas, where he began a private practice in obstetrics and gynecology.

One child that he helped deliver was famous Tejano singer Selena Quintanilla.

When President Richard Nixon "closed the gold window" by ending American participation in the Bretton Woods System, thus ending the U.S. dollar's loose association with gold on August 15, 1971, Paul decided to enter politics and became a Republican candidate for the United States Congress.

In 1974, incumbent Robert R. Casey defeated him for the 22nd district.

In 1976, Paul formed the Foundation for Rational Economics and Education (FREE), and in 1985 was named the first chairman of the conservative PAC Citizens for a Sound Economy, both free-market groups focused on limited government.

President Gerald Ford later appointed Casey to the Federal Maritime Commission, and Paul won an April 1976 special election to the vacant office after a runoff.

Paul served in Congress three different periods: first from 1976 to 1977, after he won a special election, then from 1979 to 1985, and finally from 1997 to 2013.

In his early years, Paul served on the House Banking Committee, where he blamed the Federal Reserve for inflation and spoke against the banking mismanagement that resulted in the savings and loan crisis.

Paul lost the next regular election to Democrat Robert Gammage by fewer than 300 votes (0.2%), but defeated Gammage in a 1978 rematch, and was reelected in 1980 and 1982.

Gammage underestimated Paul's popularity among local mothers: "I had real difficulty down in Brazoria County, where he practiced, because he'd delivered half the babies in the county. There were only two obstetricians in the county, and the other one was his partner."

He spoke against the reinstatement of registration for the military draft in 1980, in opposition to President Jimmy Carter and the majority of his fellow Republican members of Congress.

During his first term, Paul founded the Foundation for Rational Economics and Education (FREE), a non-profit think tank dedicated to promoting principles of limited government and free-market economics.

In 1984, Paul became the first chairman of the Citizens for a Sound Economy (CSE), a conservative political group founded by Charles and David Koch "to fight for less government, lower taxes, and less regulation."

On three occasions, he sought the presidency of the United States: as the Libertarian Party nominee in 1988 and as a candidate for the Republican Party in 2008 and 2012.

A self-described constitutionalist, Paul is a critic of several of the federal government's policies, especially the existence of the Federal Reserve and tax policy, as well as the military–industrial complex, the war on drugs, and the war on terror.

He has also been a vocal critic of mass surveillance policies such as the USA PATRIOT Act and the NSA surveillance programs.

He has been characterized as the "intellectual godfather" of the Tea Party movement, a fiscally conservative political movement started in 2007 and popularized in 2009 that is largely against most matters of interventionism.

After the popularity and grassroots enthusiasm of his 2008 presidential bid, Paul announced in July 2011 that he would not seek reelection to Congress in order to focus on his 2012 bid for the presidency.

At both the 2008 and 2012 Republican National Conventions, Paul received the second-highest number of delegates behind only McCain and Romney respectively.

He became the first Representative in history to serve concurrently with a child in the Senate when his son, Rand Paul, became United States Senator from Kentucky in 2011.

Ron Paul is a Senior Fellow and Distinguished Counselor of the Mises Institute, and has published a number of books and promoted the ideas of economists of the Austrian School such as Murray Rothbard, Friedrich Hayek, and Ludwig von Mises during his political campaigns.

He has cited President Grover Cleveland as a preferred model of governance.

Finishing in the top four with delegates in both races (while winning four states in the 2012 primaries), he refused to endorse the Republican nominations of John McCain and Mitt Romney during their respective 2008 and 2012 campaigns against Barack Obama.

In May 2012, Paul announced that he would not be competing in any other presidential primaries but that he would still compete for delegates in states where the primary elections had already been held.

In January 2013, Paul retired from Congress but remained active on college campuses, giving speeches promoting libertarian and libertarian-conservative ideas.

He also continues to provide political commentary through The Ron Paul Liberty Report, a web show he co-hosts on YouTube.

At 81, and despite not running, Paul received one electoral vote from a Texas faithless elector in the 2016 presidential election, making him the oldest person to receive an Electoral College vote, as well as the second registered Libertarian presidential candidate in history to receive an electoral vote, after John Hospers in 1972.