Paul Eric Strauss[1] (born April 11, 1964)[2] is an American politician and attorney serving as the senior United States shadow senator from the District of Columbia since 1997.

[4] Strauss was born to a Jewish family in Brooklyn, raised in the Upper East Side of Manhattan, and graduated from Dwight School.

[7] As a youth, Strauss was active in politics, volunteering for the election campaigns of Mario Biaggi, Hugh Carey, and Jimmy Carter.

To deny basic rights to the citizens of the National Capital makes a mockery of our attempts to act as a model of democracy for the rest of the world.

[22] Working with a new bipartisan group called Iowans for D.C. Statehood, Strauss took the opportunity to address Democratic precincts in Iowa.

[21] At the Iowa caucuses in 2020, Strauss and shadow Senator Michael Donald Brown took over the campaign bus left behind by John Delaney of Maryland, who had exited the presidential race.

[23] Decorated with a banner and signs promoting D.C. as the 51st state, the bus was parked outside the Des Moines Marriott Hotel, where hundreds of journalists were staying.

In 2014, he visited Nagaland in India to participate in the 3rd biennial NER Agri Expo, an exposition attended by farmers, investors, agriculturists, business houses, and entrepreneurs.

[24] In 2015, Strauss appeared before a panel of the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization (UNPO) and, citing the lack of statehood for Washington, D.C., successfully petitioned for the District of Columbia to become the first and only North American participant in the international body.

[26] The event was classified as a formal "exchange of views", and was chaired by former Member of the European Parliament Alex Mayer of the United Kingdom in conjunction with the Secretariat of the European Parliament's Delegation for Relations with the U.S. Lucia Parrucci, DC's advocacy officer from the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization, and Richard Schiff, an Emmy Award-winning actor and democracy activist joined Strauss for the presentation.