Welcome to Loser Sons of Politics, a new column where members of the Jezebel staff recall with fondness the antics of the loser sons of politicians. Today: William Paul, son of Senator Rand Paul, who has pled guilty to DUI. This is the 22-year-old’s third alcohol-related run-in in as many years.


According to WKYT, the young Paul pled guilty to DUI on Tuesday. Additional charges—that he’d also failed to maintain insurance coverage—were dropped. Paul’s punishment includes 45 days of license suspension and alcohol education. He is also required to pay $718 in fines. Once those stipulations are met, he’ll be back on the road. Look out, Kentucky!

Paul has faced alcohol-related charges in the past. In 2013, He was charged with assaulting a flight attendant and consuming alcohol while underage. Those charges were dropped. Later that year, Kentucky’s Alcoholic Beverage Control cited him for alcohol possession of a minor at Keeneland. Police classified this as an aggravated DUI charge because they say Paul refused an alcohol test. Neither Paul, nor his father has commented.


Normally, we wouldn’t give a shit about what some guy’s kid did. But the game changes when the father of the loser has built a career on dispensing advice for how other fathers should father their own offspring. Rand Paul isn’t the sort of politician who touts his status as a family man as somehow qualifying him for elected office like, say, a Huckabee or a Palin, but he solidified his son’s place on the Loser Sons pantheon during an interview with conservative talk show host Laura Ingraham that occurred during recent unrest in Baltimore.

“I came through the train on Baltimore (sic) last night, I’m glad the train didn’t stop,” he said, laughing, during an interview with conservative radio host Laura Ingraham. Railing against what he repeatedly called “thuggery and thievery” in the streets of Baltimore, Paul told Ingraham that talking about “root causes” was not appropriate in the middle of a riot. “The police have to do what they have to do, and I am very sympathetic to the plight of the police in this,” he said. As for root causes, Paul listed some ideas of his own. “There are so many things we can talk about,” the senator said, “the breakdown of the family structure, the lack of fathers, the lack of a moral code in our society.”

Lack of fathers, indeed.

Image via WKYT