Top 10 list of Rand Paul accomplishments

None of the Kentucky Republican's major pieces of legislation has passed, but as a freshman senator in the minority, Paul has ignited a national following and elevated to the forefront issues such as federal surveillance and criminal justice reform.

Here are the actions that Paul considers to be his greatest hits, ranked by his staff:

1. His 13-hour filibuster. Driven by unanswered questions about the legality of using drone strikes inside the United States, Paul filibustered the nomination of John Brennan as director of the Central Intelligence Agency on March 6.

2. Paul filed a lawsuit against President Barack Obama and the National Security Agency in February 2014, arguing that a program to collect metadata from vast swaths of Americans was an intrusion of privacy.

3. As a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he pressed U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for details about the Sept. 11, 2012, attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, and the death of four Americans.

4. He held a "listening session" with local leaders in Ferguson, Mo., in October 2014 in the wake of civil unrest there. Paul has said he thinks the underlying problem in Ferguson and elsewhere is a criminal justice system that unfairly targets minorities.

5. In Detroit in December 2013, Paul described his idea for the "Economic Freedom Zone Act of 2013," which would reduce taxes in any ZIP code with unemployment greater than 11/ 2 times the national average.

6. Paul traveled to Guatemala on a mission trip to do free eye surgeries.

7. He filed a resolution that declared a state of war exists between the Islamic State and the United States.

8. Paul has pushed for criminal justice reform. In February 2014, he appeared before a committee at the Kentucky Senate to argue for restoration of voting rights for nonviolent Kentucky felons, and in February this year filed a bill that would restore federal voting rights. He filed a criminal justice reform bill last month.

9. He spoke on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley, about protecting Fourth Amendment rights.

10. In April 2014, he filed a bill that would halt U.S. aid to the Palestinian government until it agrees to a cease-fire and recognizes the right of Israel to exist.