Paul campaign touts more than 1,000 precinct captains

MARION - With only weeks until the first-in-the-nation Iowa caucuses, low-polling Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul told reporters Friday he's confident in his run for the presidency.

The Republican spoke to a standing-room-only audience at the Marion Public Library, explaining again why he's different from other candidates and criticizing President Barack Obama's executive actions this week on gun control.

Paul's appearance comes after the presidential hopeful announced Thursday his campaign has 1,007 precinct captains committed for caucus night Feb. 1. The volunteers will cover 60 percent of Iowa's precincts.

'We've been working very hard for the last year, really, to get precinct captains,” Paul said. 'We think we're one of the best-organized campaigns of all the presidential candidates, and really, in a caucus, you know, organizational ability makes a big deal of a difference, and we think we're going to surprise a lot of people.”

Paul sits low in Iowa polls among Republican candidates, polling about 2.6 percent - behind Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who leads with 30.8 percent, and businessman Donald Trump, who has 26.8 percent support among likely caucusgoers, according to a Real Clear Politics average of Iowa polls.

But Paul expressed little faith in polling results, asserting they're often inaccurate and that his supporters, which he says are mostly college students, don't participate.

'We have a good shot with the younger audience,” Paul said. 'We also don't think that they show up in the polling that well because young people have cellphones, and I've yet to meet a college-aged person who's ever done a presidential survey.”

With the caucuses about three weeks away, the campaign will gear its efforts toward 'getting people to the polls,” he said.

'Ultimately, it's old-fashioned, good shoe leather, me trying to work my hardest,” he said. 'Our team is trying to get people out.”

Paul's Iowa 10,000 College Tour, which occurred in October, aimed to corral at least 10,000 Iowa college students to caucus for him in February. Now he's relying on those students to come through next month.

'In Iowa, our goal is to get 10,000 of them to vote for us and to show up, and we think we have a good chance,” Paul said.

On Obama's executive orders on guns, Paul called the moves 'unconstitutional,” saying they'll set a bad precedent for the next president. Among other things, Obama's orders require more businesses that sell firearms to obtain licenses and conduct background checks on potential buyers.

'There's a danger to giving (one person) so much power,” Paul said, adding that he's not opposed to background checks but that criminals can often find other ways to obtain guns.