Cruz, Ted (Raphael Edward), 1970- , American politician, b. Calgary, Alberta, Canada (Princeton Univ. (B.A., 1992), Harvard Law School (J.D., 1995). Born in Canada, Cruz’s family moved to Texas when he was four years old. A champion debater at Princeton, Cruz graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law, where he was the lead editor for the Harvard Law Review, and founded the Harvard Latino Law Review. He clerked for J. Michael Luttig (U.S. Court of Appeals, 4th Circuit, 1995) and Chief Justice of the Supreme Court William Rehnquist (1996). Cruz worked in private practice from 1997-98, then worked on George W. Bush’s presidential campaign (1999), serving as Bush’s Associate Deputy Attorney General and on the U.S. Federal Trade Commission. He was appointed Texas’s Solicitor General, serving from 2003-08, and argued 43 cases before the Supreme Court. After another four years in private practice, Cruz successfully won for the U.S. Senate, taking office in 2013. Cruz ran for President in 2015 and was sharply critical of Donald Trump's candidacy, giving a lukewarm endorsement to Trump after Trump won the Republican presidential nomination. However, once Trump took office, Cruz became a strong supporter of his positions and supported his 2020 attempts to overturn the election results. Cruz has become a conservative firebrand in the Senate, alienating some of his colleagues through his sharp attacks on their positions.
See his political writings (2015, 2020); study by T. Alberta (2019).
The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2024, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.
See more Encyclopedia articles on: U.S. History: Biographies
