Name: Robert J Paulson
DOB: May 13th, 1942
Religion: Methodist
Hometown: Detroit, MI
Married : Annie Leigh Paulson (m. 1968)
Children: Robby Jr. (b. 1970) ; Allison (b. 1973) ; Frank (b. 1975) ; Olivia (b. 1980)

Biography :

Paulson was born during World War II to parents who both worked in the Aresenal of Democracy that Detroit became during the war. However, during the early 50's, the family moved to Cocoa, Florida where his father's family had a small electronics business that had to be taken care of and sold off because of a death in the family. The family took to the warm weather and put down roots. Paulson grew up in the Florida sun and graduated with honors in 1960, then went to the University of Florida where he got a degree in Engineering while also joining Air Force ROTC.

After graduating in '65, Paulson entered the Air Force an officer and was sent over to Vietnam. After a few largely non-spectacular tours of duty, Paulson got a surprising offer to go into Astronaut training as even though he wasn't the world's greatest pilot during war, his higher ups has seen he was a great pilot.

Due to a variety of issues with both internal politics at NASA and the budget of the space program in general, Paulson never got to go into space and was quietly discharged in 1973. During this time period, he had made enough connections and as a result, chose to run for the State Senate in Florida. Running a campaign largely based on his career in the military and love for NASA, Robert managed to win a five-way primary before winning the open seat. Once in the Senate, Paulson surprisingly became a liberal lion when it came to social issues, but in Paulson narrowly won reelection thanks to his great constituent services and the simple fact that Paulson was genuinely likable guy.

But, in 1980, he made the (somewhat foolish in some people's eyes) choice to run for the open House seat in his district. Opponents even in the Democratic primary pointed at his liberal record on fiscal and social issues to try to paint him as unelectable in a general election, but Paulson managed to win the 4-way primary thanks to that liberal base that existed even on the Space Coast and his massive support for NASA which he parlayed into big-time support from people associated with the space program who might have disagreed with him on pretty much everything, but understood from personal experience how much he loved the space program.

The same thing happened in the general which led to the campaign manager of the Republican candidate to say afterwards in an interview, "We just didn't get it. We had these family values types, these tax cutters types all going out to vote for a guy who was to the left of Ted Goddamn Kennedy, all because he just about blew the Apollo lander."

Since his election in '81, the GOP has occasionally tried to fund a new challenger, but at this point, Paulson is a bit of a cult figure on the Space Coast, especially when he famously said on a Sunday panel show, "look, President Reagan could send me a bottle of Johnny Walker Black and have it delivered by Kathleen Turner and I'd still vote against his budget if a dime is taken away from NASA."

Welcome to the game. I'm glad to have someone from my home city joining the game. And wishes you best of success throughout the game. Good luck