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AMES, Iowa Sen. Rand Paul, nursing a cold, did not shake many hands on the first day of his swing through Iowa this weekend. Instead, he elbow-bumped activists as he made his way through crowds and hoarsely thanked them for their support.

The Republicans who showed up Friday at Pauls rally did not mind. In a state where caucus-goers often demand warm interactions with presidential contenders, they were happy to hear Pauls riffs on monetary policy and Montesquieu from a distance.

As Paul (Ky.) moves closer to a 2016 bid, he is betting that in a field of big personalities, his low-key style and atypical pitch mixing snarky asides, dovish takes on foreign policy and a compassionate plea for criminal-justice reform will set his candidacy apart.

Just look at whos here, said David Fischer, a former Iowa GOP official, as he surveyed the crowd at Pauls gathering Friday at a Des Moines winery. He is actually bringing women, college students and people who are not white into the Republican Party.

The challenge for Paul is whether his approach, which has echoes of his father, former Texas congressman Ron Paul, will enable him to do better than the elder Pauls third-place finish in the 2012 GOP presidential caucuses in Iowa.

The son is a little more mainstream, said former Republican congressman Jim Leach, who represented eastern Iowa for 15terms. If he can stay there and play into the desire on the conservative side for someone new, he could find an opening.

The latest poll of Iowa Republicans, conducted by Bloomberg Politics and the Des Moines Register, shows Paul in second place among potential GOP candidates. Gov. Scott Walker (Wis.), boosted by his breakout speech in late January at a conservative summit, narrowly leads with 15 percent. Paul is at 14percent, and former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee is at 10percent.

For now, in this early stage of the primary scramble, Paul is focused on reviving his fathers political base in Iowa, which begins the primary process, by attacking an institution that has long frustrated the libertarian right: the Federal Reserve.

Before Paul took the stage at Jasper Winery, Liberty Iowa organizers played a video featuring archival clips of both Ron and Rand Paul delivering critiques of the central bank.

Minutes later, Paul, who last month introduced the Federal Reserve Transparency Act, drew raucous applause when he warned its policies are undermining U.S. currency.

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Paul looks for an opening in Iowa