Politics

Video: Full interview with Sen. Rand Paul

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."

READ MORE: Republican presidential candidate Paul wants to leave Alaskans alone

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