Basic bio info
Ted Cruz, the son of a Cuban immigrant and American mother, was born in Calgary, Alberta, on Dec. 22, 1970, while his parents were working in the oil business. He’s since renounced his Canadian citizenship, and lawyers from both parties have said they think he’s eligible to run for president.
He won election to the Senate in 2012 as a political rookie, riding a tea party wave to upset a candidate with decades of experience and deep connections inside the Republican Party. Prior to his election to the Senate, Cruz’s career was centered on practicing law at the highest level. A graduate of Harvard Law School and former clerk for Chief Justice William Rehnquist, Cruz led a Houston, Texas-based firm’s Supreme Court practice, taught such litigation at the University of Texas and was charged with representing the state before the high court as its solicitor general. He also served in the George W. Bush administration, at both the Federal Trade Commission and as an associate deputy attorney general at the Justice Department.
He and his wife, Heidi, a managing director at Goldman Sachs, live in Houston with their two daughters, Caroline and Catherine. His father is now a Texas pastor who draws plenty of his own attention, saying in the past that President Barack Obama is a “Marxist” who should be sent “back to Kenya.”
Should he fail to win the nomination or the presidency, Cruz would retain his U.S. Senate seat through 2019. He also could choose to run for re-election in 2018, having broadened his national network of allies and donors during this presidential campaign.
His stand (entering the race)
Barely more than two years since he crashed the U.S. Senate with a brash ambition to yank Republicans into a harder line against Obama, Cruz jumped the queue on Monday, March 23, to become the first well-known candidate to formally enter the wide-open race for the GOP nomination for president.
In an unorthodox move, Cruz made his announcement more than 1,000 miles from his hometown of Houston and not in an early primary or caucus state, but at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va., an evangelical Christian university founded in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains in 1971 by the Moral Majority’s the Rev. Jerry Falwell.
Cruz’s choice of venue seemed calculated to stake his claim with born-again Christian voters who historically dominate the Iowa caucuses, which will kick off the presidential caucuses and primaries on Feb. 1. With his no-prisoners conservatism, Cruz is a contender for the most polarizing figure in a crowded GOP field. No contender is as widely derided and disliked by Washington pundits, Democrats and even many in his own party as a brilliant but reckless figure. But it is a reputation that might help more than hurt in the Republican nominating process, his supporters say.
“The rap against him is he doesn’t play well with others. Voters don’t particularly like those others, ” said Jack Pitney, professor of politics at California’s Claremont McKenna College. “The rap against him is that he alienates establishment Republicans and doesn’t build coalitions with Democrats, to which a lot of Republican primary voters will say, ‘Cool.’”
Democratic consultant Paul Begala agreed that Cruz could prove formidable.
“He knows how to harness the power of the most committed activists in his party to topple a seemingly invincible establishment Republican, ” Begala said on the eve of Cruz’s presidential announcement. “He has Barack Obama’s education and Sarah Palin’s politics. That may be the combination it takes to unify the insurgents. I could see him having a powerful appeal among tea partyers, Christian conservatives and even some libertarians. Combining those three strains of insurgents just might be the recipe for success against Bush Inc.”
If elected, Cruz, 44, would be the first Hispanic president, the first born in Canada - which most legal scholars think is not a barrier to his meeting the constitutional requirement of being a “natural born citizen, ” because he was born to an American mother - and the first born since 1970.
But unlike Obama, who, with an eye to history, announced his candidacy on the steps of the Old State Capitol in Springfield, Ill., redolent of Lincoln, Cruz’s choice of venue seems more narrowly tailored.
“Picking Liberty University because it works well in Iowa is a sort of short-term strategy that lacks that sort of eyes-up confidence when you think of Obama’s announcement in Springfield, ” said Southern Methodist University political scientist Cal Jillson.
But he is a man on the move: He actually announced his candidacy hours ahead of the official launch, in a post-midnight Twitter message.
His support
The party with the supposed “Hispanic problem” has two rising young Hispanic stars in the presidential race. And, if nothing else, the Cruz and Rubio candidacies highlight the Democrats’ “Hispanic problem” they have no Hispanic candidates playing at that level.
He saw his national political star ascend when for 21 hours and 19 minutes in September 2013, Cruz stood in the Senate to urge Congress to cut off money for Obama’s health care law. The marathon speech, which included Cruz reading the Dr. Seuss classic “Green Eggs and Ham” to his daughters, said to be watching their father at home, was partly behind a 16-day partial government shutdown the next month. He later joked the speech featured hours of “my favorite sound” — his own voice.
The tactic was a hit among Cruz’s tea party supporters, who were excited by his entry into the 2016 race. Cruz “will excite the base in a way we haven’t seen in years,” said Amy Kremer, the former head of the Tea Party Express, at the time of his announcement.
His critics
Cruz’s uncompromising approach has won him few friends in the Senate. Arizona GOP Sen. John McCain famously labeled Cruz as one of the Senate’s “wacko birds.” In December, when Cruz defied party leaders to force a vote on Obama’s executive actions on immigration, he again drew fire: “I fail to see what conservative ends were achieved,” said Arizona GOP Sen. Jeff Flake.
That disregard for the GOP establishment during his two years on Capitol Hill has, of course, rubbed fellow party members beyond just the Senate halls the wrong way.
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