Rand Paul Flops as Father’s Successor

Diana Orrick was a loyal foot solider in the Ron Paul revolution in Nevada four years ago, fighting to put the libertarian icon’s imprint on the 2012 presidential race, and she had every hope his son, Sen. Rand Paul, would be the natural successor.

But her dream has been dashed, she said, with the younger Mr. Paul struggling to organize, raise money and find a message to reach voters the way his father did.

“Rand is not his father,” Ms. Orrick, one of Nevada’s two elected Republican National Committee members, said. “I mean the apple hasn’t fallen too far from the tree, but it has fallen some distance from the tree.”

She was an early supporter of the new Paul presidential campaign, eager to help the Kentucky lawmaker build on his father’s success by pushing libertarianism more into the mainstream. The campaign, though, ignored her, she said. So she shifted her allegiance to Donald Trump.

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