Astrid Ressler
Staff Writer
This past week, Texas Senator Ted Cruz tweeted that he was officially going to run for president in 2016. A Canadian native and a proud Southern Baptist, Cruz is the first candidate to throw his hat into the ring for the upcoming presidential election. Even though other senators, governors and members of Congress have played with this idea in the media, someone had to be first and it was Cruz.
Cruz has made a big name for himself in the last few years as a Texas senator voicing strong opposition to President Obama’s healthcare law. Cruz was also involved in the effort to repeal the law, partially shutting down the government for over two weeks back in 2013. The repeal of Obamacare will likely be a focus in the senator’s campaign for presidency.
National Public Radio has pointed out that there is no doubt Cruz’s “natural-born” status is going to come into question as he goes forward with his campaign. While his father is a Cuban citizen who escaped from Cuba during the revolution in the 1950s, his mother is an American citizen.
Cruz, however, was born in Calgary, Canada. One of the three qualifications for president written in the Constitution is that the candidate has to be a “natural-born” citizen of the country. It may come up for debate that Cruz may not qualify for the job because of this.
As a republican, Cruz has proposed that the country as a whole not choose a side on the issue of gay marriage, but instead he believes that legislation should be put in place to allow the states to choose for themselves on whether or not to legalize same-sex couples to marry. This would allow more conservative states, such as his state of Texas, to make gay marriage illegal.
While the Texas senator may be a bit of a climate change skeptic, he does contend that if global warming is happening that humans are not causing it. The Washington Post reported that the Senate even voted on this idea in January and nearly every senator voted for a measure agreeing that climate change is happening. What’s interesting is that only 50 senators, nearly all democrats, supported the argument that humans have contributed to this change in a significant way. Every other senator believed that humans have played no part.
Cruz has officially begun his journey on the 2016 presidential campaign trail, and other political figures will soon be following him on that road. Whether or not he makes it past the primaries, whether or not he makes it into the oval office, it is up to the voting population to get out there and elect someone who they would be proud to have represent the United States to the rest of the world.
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