Kentucky Senator Rand Paul is hoping to throw his hat into the ring for the 2016 presidential election, but the first-term Republican faces some significant challenges in the bid to win his party’s nomination.

The libertarian-leaning politician will visit several Western states these coming weeks before heading off to Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina to try to bolster their presence there, where key early campaigns will take place that can make or break party hopefuls, according to an Associated Press report.

He is also trying to prepare himself for a leading role in the new Senate majority to help improve the image of Republicans nationwide.

He said he hasn’t yet fully decided he wants to run, but he is making an aggressive push that suggests his decision is all but made.

Paul is the son of former Texas Rep. Ron Paul, himself a former presidential candidate and popular libertarian option who appealed to a younger demographic.

Paul also preaches a reduction in the size of the federal government, and chooses not to push hard on social issues like gay marriage.

However, some perceptions of him make him an unlikely victor in the battle for the Republican nomination, specifically his alleged pro-gay marriage stance and a foreign policy that others would brand as isolationist. Paul, on the other hand, denies that he holds such views.

He will likely face some of the same challenges as his father, who was seen as a fringe member of the party who advocated staying out of world affairs and abolishing agencies such as the Federal Reserve. He has many of the same supporters that his farther had, and much of the same baggage.

Rand Paul has been trying to distance himself from his father’s standpoints of dissolving the National Security Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency, as well as shutting down military bases overseas. He is likely to avoid discussing his father in the runup to the election, hoping to avoid being cast in his father’s shadow.