Ted Cruz

Rafael Edward “Ted” Cruz (born December 22, 1970) is an American politician and the junior United States Senator for the state of Texas. A Republican, Cruz defeated the Democrat Paul Sadler  in the November 6, 2012, United States Senate election. Cruz is also endorsed by the Tea Party Movement and the Republican Liberty Caucus.

Cruz won the 2012 nomination for the Senate seat being vacated by his fellow Republican, Kay Bailey Hutchison. On July 31, 2012, he defeated Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst in the Republican primary runoff, 57–43 percent. In the general election, Cruz prevailed with 56.6–40.5 percent over Sadler.

Cruz was Solicitor General of the U.S. state of Texas from 2003 to May 2008, appointed by Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott. He was the first Hispanic Solicitor General in Texas, the youngest Solicitor General in the United States, and had the longest tenure in the post thus far in Texas history. He was formerly a partner at the law firm Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, where he led the firm’s U.S. Supreme Court and national appellate litigation practice.

He previously served as the director of the Office of Policy Planning at the Federal Trade Commission, an Associate Deputy Attorney General at the United States Department of Justice, and as Domestic Policy Advisor to U.S. President George W. Bush on the 2000 Bush-Cheney campaign. In addition, from 2004 to 2009 Cruz was an Adjunct Professor of Law at the University of Texas School of Law in Austin, where he taught U.S. Supreme Court litigation.

On November 14, 2012, Cruz was appointed vice-chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

Early life and education
Cruz was born in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, where his parents, Eleanor Darragh and Rafael Cruz, were working in the oil business. His father, in 1957 during the Cuban Revolution, was a Cuban immigrant to the United States. His mother, an American, was reared in Delaware, in a family of Irish and Italian descent. Cruz's family returned to the U.S. when he was four years old.

Cruz attended high school at Faith West Academy in Katy, Texas, and then graduated from Second Baptist High School in Houston.

Cruz earned his Bachelor of Arts from Princeton University and his J.D., magna cum laude, from Harvard Law School. He was an editor of the Harvard Law Review, an executive editor of the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, and a founding editor of the Harvard Latino Law Review. While at Princeton, he competed for the American Whig-Cliosophic Society's Debate Panel as one of North America's top-ranked parliamentary debaters, winning the top speaker award at both the 1992 U.S. National Debating Championship and the 1992 North American Debating Championship. In 1992, he was named Speaker of the Year and Team of the Year (with his debate partner, David Panton) by the American Parliamentary Debate Association. In 1991 he and his partner came in second to Austan Goolsbee and partner David Gray. Cruz was also a semi-finalist at the 1995 World Universities Debating Championship.

Legal career
Cruz served as a law clerk to William Rehnquist, Chief Justice of the United States, and J. Michael Luttig of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. Cruz was the first Hispanic ever to clerk for a Chief Justice of the United States.

Cruz has authored more than 80 United States Supreme Court briefs and presented 43 oral arguments, including nine before the United States Supreme Court.

In the landmark case of District of Columbia v. Heller, Cruz assembled a coalition of thirty-one states in defense of the principle that the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution guarantees an individual right to keep and bear arms. Cruz also presented oral argument for the amici states in the companion case to Heller before the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

In addition to his victory in Heller, Cruz has successfully defended the Ten Commandments monument on the Texas State Capitol grounds, the recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools and the 2003 Texas redistricting plan.

Cruz also successfully defended, in Medellin v. Texas, the State of Texas against an attempt by the International Court of Justice to re-open the criminal convictions of 51 murderers on death row throughout the United States.

2012 U.S. Senate election
On January 19, 2011, following an announcement that U.S. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison would not seek reelection, Cruz announced via blogger conference call his candidacy for the position. Cruz faced opposition from sitting Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst in the Republican senatorial primary. Cruz was endorsed by David Barton, founder and president of WallBuilders; the Club for Growth, a conservative political action committee; Erick Erickson, editor of prominent conservative blog RedState; the FreedomWorks for America super PAC; Princeton University professor Robert P. George; nationally syndicated radio host Mark Levin; former Attorney General Edwin Meese; Tea Party Express; Young Conservatives of Texas; and U.S. Senators Jim DeMint, Mike Lee, Rand Paul, and Pat Toomey. He has also been endorsed by former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, Texas Congressman Ron Paul, Michigan Congressman Justin Amash, and former-U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania Rick Santorum.

Cruz won the runoff for the Republican nomination with a 14-point margin over Dewhurst. In the November 6 general election, Cruz faced the Democratic nominee Paul Sadler, an attorney and a former state representative from Henderson in east Texas. A public opinion poll conducted from October 15 to 21, 2012, indicated that Cruz was leading Sadler, 54-39 percent among likely voters. The poll questioned 800 voters and was conducted by the University of Texas and the Texas Tribune and has a margin of error of 3.46 percent. He prevailed over Sadler by the approximate margin of 57–41 percent, a margin even larger than the UT poll.

In the general election, Cruz prevailed with 4,456,654 ballots (56.6%) to Sadler's 3,183,359 (40.5%). Two minor candidates held the remaining 2.9% of the ballots cast. Cruz ran 99,203 votes behind the Republican presidential nominee, Mitt Romney.

Personal life
Cruz was born and spent the first four years of his life in Calgary before his parents returned to Houston. His father was jailed and tortured by the Fulgencio Batista regime and fought for Fidel Castro in the Cuban Revolution but "didn't know Castro was a Communist" and later became a staunch critic of Castro when "the rebel leader took control and began seizing private property and suppressing dissent." Rafael Cruz moved to Austin in 1957 to study at the University of Texas. He spoke no English and had $100 sewn into his underwear. The elder Cruz worked his way through school as a dishwasher making 50 cents an hour. Cruz’s mother, who was from Delaware, was the first person in her family to attend college. She earned a degree in mathematics from Rice University in Houston in the 1950s, working summers at Foley’s and Shell. Cruz has said, "I'm Cuban, Irish, and Italian, and yet somehow I ended up Southern Baptist."

Cruz and his wife, Heidi Nelson Cruz, have two daughters, Caroline Camille and Catherine Christiane. Cruz met his wife while working on the George W. Bush presidential campaign of 2000. Cruz's wife is currently head of the Southwest Region in the Investment Management Division of Goldman, Sachs & Co. and previously worked in the White House for Condoleezza Rice and in New York as an investment banker.

Honors and awards

 * "America's Leading Lawyers for Business," Chambers USA (2009 & 2010)
 * "50 Most Influential Minority Lawyers in America," National Law Journal (2008)
 * "25 Greatest Texas Lawyers of the Past Quarter Century," Texas Lawyer (2010)
 * "20 Young Hispanic Americans on the Rise," Newsweek (1999)
 * Traphagen Distinguished Alumnus, Harvard Law School

Committee assignments

 * Senate Armed Services Committee
 * Senate Judiciary Committee
 * Senate Commerce Committee
 * Senate Rules Committee
 * Senate Special Committee on Aging

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