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Sen. Ted Cruz will announce White House bid at Liberty University Sen. Ted Cruz will announce White House bid at Liberty University
(35 minutes later)
Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas will announce that he is running for president of the United States during an appearance Monday at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va., according to a campaign adviser. Sen. Ted Cruz, the combative conservative who has made liberty the clarion call of his politics, will announce his intention to pursue a presidential bid Monday morning at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va., according to a campaign adviser.
The Republican, a tea party favorite, will launch an outright bid for the White House rather than forming an exploratory committee. The announcement by Cruz (R-Tex.) makes him the first major 2016 contender to formally declare a presidential bid.
Cruz will be the featured speaker Monday at Liberty University’s student convocation. In coming weeks as he launches his campaign in early-voting states, advisers said Cruz plans to build upon a national base of small-dollar donors and cast himself as the Republican Party’s authentic conservative who has challenged both parties during his short time in Washington. His entry into the Republican race is likely to rupture the dynamics in the early field and will give other active contenders — including Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and former Florida governor Jeb Bush — a competitive rival on the right.
The Houston Chronicle, which first reported news of Cruz’s announcement, said he plans to raise $40 million to $50 million. Cruz, 44, a Harvard and Princeton-educated lawyer elected to the Senate in 2012, is best known for championing controversial efforts to block implementation of President Obama’s health-care law in 2013. The crusade led to a 16-day government shutdown.
Cruz has been a controversial figure since he entered the U.S. Senate following his election in 2012. His pressure on congressional leadership in September 2013 not to fund the government unless President Obama’s health-care law was defunded led to a 16-day government shutdown. That showdown included a 21-hour filibuster of the spending bill by Cruz on the Senate floor. But Cruz’s unrepentant battles against the Obama administration and with leaders of his own party made him a hero to many conservatives and have left him with a powerful national network of small-dollar donors. He will aim to raise $40 million to $50 million for his presidential bid.
During an appearance March 15 in Barrington, N.H., Cruz told supporters to “stay tuned” for news about his plans to enter the race for president. At that stop, he also called for unlimited campaign contributions, equating the flow of money to free speech, and he reiterated calls for the abolition of Common Core and the Internal Revenue Service. Advisers said that in coming weeks, as he launches his campaign in early voting states, Cruz plans to build upon that base of support and cast himself as an authentic GOP conservative who has challenged both parties during his short time in Washington.
At a dinner earlier this month in Lincoln, N.H., Cruz called the grass-roots support he has received in the state and nationwide “breathtaking.” Speaking to voters in early primary states and young people at the Conservative Political Action Committee’s annual meeting over the past month, Cruz has previewed what his campaign will aim to look like: a grass-roots conservative movement that spreads his message of authentic conservatism nationwide. He has urged people to participate in a “grass-roots guerilla campaign” modeled on the one that helped propel him to a Senate victory.
Robert Costa contributed to this report. “The only way we’re going to make this happen is by building a grass-roots army in New Hampshire and in all 50 states,” he said in Lincoln, N.H., last week.
[Read: Ted Cruz is the most underrated candidate in the 2016 field]
Cruz is scheduled to give the convocation at Liberty University on Monday. By selecting the school, a private Christian college founded by the late fundamentalist preacher Jerry Falwell, as the site for his announcement, Cruz is also sending a clear signal to conservative Republican primary voters about his candidacy and his political positioning heading into the race. He has assiduously courted evangelicals and other social conservatives as part of an attempt to build a coalition of conservatives frustrated with Republican Party elders in Washington.
The choice of venue also underscores Cruz’s move to actively court young conservatives. Last month he told a group of mostly 20- and 30-somethings at CPAC to be “entrepreneurs for liberty” and spread his message of conservatism with a smile.
“If we carry young people, we can turn this entire country around,” he said.
When Cruz appeared before an enthusiastic crowd at Liberty last year, he spoke urgently about what he sees as a moment of crisis for religious Americans — and received a standing ovation.
“These are troubled times,” Cruz said. “Religious liberty, the very first liberty in the Bill of Rights, the very first protection we have, has never been more in peril than it is right now.”
Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), an influential figure in the first-in the-nation caucuses, said in an interview that he welcomed Cruz’s move toward a run and called him an immediately formidable candidate in the state, which has a deeply conservative Republican electorate.
“Constitutional conservatives around the country see he is anchored in a fundamental set of values,” King said. “There is also no question he is a very smart man, and a lot of presidents did not have his raw computing power.”
Cruz, who lives in Houston with his wife, Heidi, and two young daughters, graduated from Princeton University in 1992 and from Harvard Law School in 1995. He went on to serve as an attorney in the George W. Bush administration and later was appointed Texas solicitor general.
Heidi Cruz, a managing director at Goldman Sachs, will take a leave of absence from her job to campaign with her husband, according to a campaign adviser.
In 2012, after working in private practice, Cruz rattled the Texas Republican establishment when he beat the then lieutenant governor, wealthy businessman David Dewhurst, in the state’s GOP Senate primary. His primary campaign was aggressively conservative and suspicious of the GOP’s mainstream voices, and it was cheered on by conservative leaders and editorialists in Texas and nationally.
Cruz’s father, Rafael, left Cuba in 1957. Now a Christian minister, the elder Cruz frequently travels with his son to political events, building relationships with conservative pastors and occasionally introducing Cruz to crowds.
Other expected GOP candidates are mulling exploratory committees this month with an eye on formalizing their campaigns in April, once a new federal filing period for political financing begins. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), a friend of Cruz and another conservative favorite, is planning a rally in Louisville early next month.
On fundraising — a front where Bush especially has been making significant strides in recent weeks — Cruz would be able to draw from the sprawling grass-roots army that has boosted him since he arrived in Congress. Some major donors also are ready to assist him, such as investor Hal Lambert, who founded Dallas-based Point Bridge Capital.
“Ted Cruz and Rand Paul don’t need to raise as much money as somebody else, if you would, to be contenders because they have strong organizational situations,” Jack Oliver, a top Bush financier, said in a December interview with Bloomberg News.
Cruz supports fewer restrictions on campaign spending and is a strong backer of the 2010 Citizens United decision, which laid the groundwork for super PACs that can raise unlimited sums.
“Money absolutely can be speech,” Cruz said last week in New Hampshire.
On Capitol Hill, Cruz has clashed repeatedly with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and at times angered his Republican colleagues for his brash manner and ideological zeal. Some have referred to him as a gadfly; Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) once called Cruz and his political associates “wacko birds.”
Earlier this year, Cruz targeted GOP leaders in both congressional chambers for not doing enough to counter Obama’s executive actions on immigration. In recent days, he has vocally opposed Loretta Lynch’s nomination for attorney general and signed a letter by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) cautioning the ruling Iranian regime against working with Obama on a nuclear deal.
Most allies of Cruz’s likely competitors view him as a threat, in particular those Republicans who are wooing the same conservative voters and donors as Cruz. Former neurosurgeon Ben Carson, Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-La.) and former senator Rick Santorum (Pa.) are three of more than a dozen possible hopefuls who are looking to be the hard right’s consensus choice.
Cruz will probably not be the only Texan to seek the GOP nomination. Former Texas governor Rick Perry also is considering a bid. In an interview with The Washington Post last month, he jabbed Obama and took a veiled shot at Cruz when he said voters are “going to make a rather radical shift away from a young, untested United States senator whose policies have really failed.”
Cruz’s foreign policy views are mostly hawkish. He has acknowledged in interviews that many Americans have become war weary, and he has raised concerns about the National Security Agency’s collection of phone records. But he has also been a near-daily critic of Obama’s leadership in foreign affairs and said he would consider sending U.S. troops to fight Islamic State militants.
Cruz’s early popularity in Iowa, which has long been a make-or-break state for conservative Republican presidential candidates, was highlighted in January when he spoke at a King-hosted summit in Des Moines. He got a rock-star reception as he railed against “Obamacare” and called for the Internal Revenue Service to be abolished.
In June, Cruz will publish his first book, “A Time for Truth: Reigniting the Miracle of America.” Similar to John F. Kennedy’s “Profiles in Courage,” it will feature chapters on leaders who he believes have shown grit in spite of adversity, such as Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel.
Cruz’s speaking style sets him apart from most lectern-using politicians. At almost every appearance, he prefers to pace a stage wearing a wireless microphone, mixing wry barbs about Democrats with forceful warnings about what he describes as encroaching liberalism from the culture and federal government.
Cruz’s pitch can border on apocalyptic. “The Obama economy is a disaster, Obamacare is a train wreck, and the Obama-Clinton foreign policy of leading from behind — the whole world is on fire,” he said over the weekend in New Hampshire, which hosts the first presidential primary.
Cruz’s description of a globe ablaze caused Julie Trant, 3, to wonder aloud from the audience whether the world is actually on fire — a startled reaction that led to a humorous response among adults there and jokes from late-night comedians. Cruz later appeared Monday on NBC’s “Late Night with Seth Meyers” and shrugged off the blizzard of news stories about the episode.
Speaking Tuesday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Cruz sounded wearied by the coverage and criticized the way he has been portrayed. “By the end of it, I’m Freddy Krueger-like, torturing this girl in her nightmare,” he said.