US Senator Ted Cruz from the US Republican Party yesterday confirmed that he is running for the US presidency next year, the first major candidate to officially declare a bid in the next race for the White House.
The announcement fires the starting gun on the Republican race, already expected to be a crowded contest.
“I’m running for president and I hope to earn your support!” he posted on Twitter early yesterday.
Photo: Reuters
The 44-year-old Tea Party favorite has been a senator for Texas since 2012, and is a long-time critic of US President Barack Obama’s administration.
He has raised hackles in his own party in recent years when he helped push the US government into a shutdown in 2013 over budget fights, and for opposing Republican leaders on a series of issues.
In a short video posted yesterday on Twitter, Cruz said it is time to “restore” the US, and called on young conservatives to support him.
“It’s a time for truth, a time to rise to the challenge, just as Americans have always done,” he said in the video. “I believe in America and her people, and I believe we can stand up and restore our promise. It’s going to take a new generation of courageous conservatives to make America great again and I’m ready to stand with you to lead the fight.”
He was expected to appear at Liberty University in Virginia later yesterday, where he could flesh out his leadership ambitions.
Cruz’s advisers told US media outlets he aims to raise from US$40 million to US$50 million for his campaign, and would rely on support from the Tea Party base that elected him to the US Senate in 2012.
Though Cruz is the first to declare his bid, other Republicans, including Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and US senators Rand Paul and Marco Rubio have signaled that they might join the race.
At the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) last month, Cruz told the crowd that “2016 looks like it’s going to be a crowded race.”
On his Web site, Cruz is described as “a passionate fighter for limited government, economic growth and the [US] Constitution.”
A CPAC straw poll last month put Cruz No. 3 as the party’s pick for president, behind Paul and Walker.
Bush, the son and brother of former presidents, came in fifth.
Cruz’s conservatism and uncompromising positions have often earned him condemnation from leading figures within the Republican establishment.
US Senator John McCain, the 2008 Republican presidential candidate, once derided Cruz and two other Tea Party legislators as “wacko birds on the right.”
The criticism has rarely fazed Cruz.
“I don’t work for the party bosses in Washington. I work for the people of Texas. And I fight for them,” Cruz said in a 2013 interview.
A Harvard-educated lawyer raised in Texas by a Cuban father and a mother from the US, Cruz was born not in the US, but in Canada.
He was entitled to US citizenship at birth, but his foreign birth could become a point of contention during his campaign, a job restricted to so-called “natural-born” citizens.
Cruz joined former US president George W. Bush’s legal team to argue the 2000 Florida presidential recount.
He later served under Bush in the US Department of Justice and the US Federal Trade commission.
In 2003, he returned to Texas and was appointed solicitor general, where he served for five years.
Cruz ran for the US Senate in 2011 with support from the Tea Party — antigovernment, antitax and pro-life and pro-gun conservatives who thrive in politically conservative Texas.
Cruz is an opponent of immigration reform, a key issue in the Hispanic community.
He responded to Obama’s executive action on immigration by urging fellow lawmakers to do all they could to block the measure, branding it “an illegal amnesty.”
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