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CHARLESTON, South Carolina -- Kentucky senator and newly minted presidential candidate Rand Paul is in Iowa City, Iowa Friday for the second to last official event of his weeklong campaign launch: a rally at the University of Iowa, where young voters are expected to gather to embrace his signature call for smaller, less intrusive government.

Paul has been criss-crossing the country since he formally announced his bid for the White House Tuesday, to win votes and raise money. This trip -- accompanied by an aggressive online push and a slew of interviews with major media outlets along the way -- allowed him to introduce himself to those voters who will vote first - and who could make or break his campaign.

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Kentucky Senator Rand Paul announces he will run for president in 2016.

Here's a look at the venues chosen to kick off Paul's campaign and what they convey about his candidacy:

Paul first formalized his bid for the White House in a hotel ballroom in his home state where, less than five years ago, he was elected into office for the first time. Dr. Dewey Clayton, a political science professor at the University of Louisville who has witnessed the freshman senator's meteoric rise, said he was initially surprised that Paul chose Louisville instead of his adopted hometown of Bowling Green. It was Bowling Green where Paul established his ophthalmology practice and became involved with local politics and his local church, which Paul was careful to mention in his remarks Tuesday. Bowling Green is also more conservative. But Louisville, with a population of more than 700,000, is the biggest city in the state.

Clayton said he expects the state to embrace Paul, whose anti-Obama rhetoric plays well in Kentucky.

"To be honest, it's somewhat exciting for the state of Kentucky," he said. The state is the birthplace of one U.S. president, Abraham Lincoln. Clayton mused, "I cannot remember the last Kentuckian who was running for President of the United States." (The name he was looking for - the last true Kentuckian to run for president - was then-Vice President Alben Barkley, in 1952.)

Paul began his speech by repeating his own words from the night he won Kentucky's Republican senate primary back in 2010 -- "[W]e've come to take our country back!" -- and he found his words were as well-received the second time around.

Few Republican politicians pass up the chance to invoke the state motto of New Hampshire: "Live Free or Die." Paul, who prides himself on defending the Bill of Rights, was quick to incorporate it into his speech Wednesday when he addressed an overflowing town hall of Granite State voters.

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What do Rand Paul's venues say about his campaign launch?