Conservative with a power-packed résumé
Ted Cruz, 41, is an anti-establishment senator-elect from Texas with a résumé any establishment candidate would covet. Endorsed by Tea Party groups, the lawyer represents the next wave of the anti-tax conservative backlash that started in 2010.
“The single best consequence of Republicans getting our teeth kicked in in 2008 is that it has produced a new generation of leaders in the Republican Party who are committed to standing for liberty, to fiscal restraint and to getting back to the Constitution,” Cruz told USA TODAY in August.
Ivy-League educated (Princeton undergraduate, Harvard Law School), he won national debating championships and co-founded the Harvard Latino Law Review. He worked as a law clerk for the late Chief Justice William Rehnquist, then on Texas Gov. GeorgeW. Bush’s 2000 campaign for president.
After a stint as a top official at the Federal Trade Commission, he was appointed — at age 32 — as the Texas solicitor general. He argued nine cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, mostly defending individual and states rights. He argued successfully that the International Criminal Court can’t review Texas death row cases, that the Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to bear arms, and that Texas had the right to change its congressional map in 2003 to make it even more GOPfriendly. He’s now a partner at the Morgan Lewis law firm, heading up the firm’s Supreme Court practice.
Cruz had never held elected office when he knocked off Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst in a GOP primary to replace the retiring Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison. After that, his victory was almost assured — Texas hadn’t elected a Democrat to the Senate since Lloyd Bentsen in 1988. Cruz defeated former state Rep. Paul Sadler.