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.”
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
RSS