Des Moines, Iowa — Rand Paul’s first public campaign stop on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day was at Platinum Kutz, a barbershop here, where he talked criminal-justice reform and took questions from a predominately African-American crowd.

Electric razors buzzed in the background as the Kentucky senator spoke. “I’ve got to pretend nothing else is going on,” a barber joked as a crowd of reporters, photographers, and attendees crowded through the shop in pursuit of Paul, who finally sat down in a barber’s chair. There, he proceeded to take questions — including one from a barber who did not miss a beat, continuing to cut a man’s hair as he listened to the answer — but he did not get a haircut.


“You know, I don’t cut it very often,” he told reporters, when asked why he opted against a trim. “It just kinda does what it’s gonna do.”