Ted Cruz

Cruz has been married to Heidi Cruz since 2001. They have two daughters, Caroline and Catherine. He met Heidi while both worked on George W. Bush's 2000 presidential campaign policy team.

His father, Rafael Cruz, was born in Cuba and later moved to the United States, while his mother, Eleanor Wilson, was born in Delaware. Cruz grew up in Houston, Texas, and was raised as a Southern Baptist.

Cruz graduated from Princeton University in 1992 and earned his law degree from Harvard Law School in 1995. At Princeton, he became an award-winning debater and studied public policy. At Harvard, he challenged the liberal legal views of one of his instructors, Alan Dershowitz.

After law school, Cruz clerked for the Fourth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals and for Chief Justice William Rehnquist of the U.S. Supreme Court. He later worked in private practice, represented Congressman John Boehner in a lawsuit, and contributed preliminary work to the Republican-led impeachment proceedings against President Bill Clinton.

Cruz joined George W. Bush's 2000 presidential campaign as a legal and domestic-policy adviser and served on Bush's legal team during Bush v. Gore. He subsequently worked at the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission.

In 2003, Cruz became solicitor general of Texas at age 32, making him the youngest person to hold the position in the United States. During five years in the post, he argued eight cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, according to the Senate biography, and later argued a ninth case after returning to private practice.

His work included arguments involving the relationship between international treaties and state authority, the constitutionality of a public monument featuring the Ten Commandments, freedom of speech, the right to keep and bear arms, and religious liberty. One of his Supreme Court victories involved preserving the death penalty for a Mexican citizen convicted of raping and murdering two teenage girls.

Cruz entered electoral politics in 2012 by running for the Senate seat vacated by Kay Bailey Hutchison. Initially considered an underdog against Texas Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst, he won the Republican runoff with support from Tea Party figures including Sarah Palin and Rand Paul. He won the general election and took office in 2013.

As a senator, Cruz developed a reputation as a conservative firebrand willing to challenge Republican leadership as well as Democratic lawmakers. In 2013, he spoke on the Senate floor for more than 21 hours in opposition to funding for the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. During the speech, he read from Green Eggs and Ham and passages from Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. The effort contributed to the federal government shutdown that followed.

His legislative priorities have included limited government, economic growth, national security, telecommunications, privacy, border security, and space exploration. Measures associated with his Senate work have included reforms to 529 college savings accounts, repeal of the Affordable Care Act's individual mandate, sanctions on terrorists who use civilians as human shields, reauthorization of NASA, and sanctions targeting the Nord Stream 2 pipeline.

Cruz announced his candidacy for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination in 2015. His platform called for a smaller federal government, abolishing the Department of Education and the Internal Revenue Service, a flat tax, limits on abortion access, and allowing states to decide the issue of same-sex marriage. He also advocated stronger border security and criticized the Obama administration's immigration policies.

Cruz won the Iowa caucuses in February 2016, defeating Donald Trump there, and remained Trump's principal rival after the Republican field narrowed. In April, Cruz announced Carly Fiorina as his prospective running mate. After losing the Indiana primary, he suspended his campaign.

At the Republican National Convention in July 2016, Cruz congratulated Trump without endorsing him and urged delegates to vote their conscience. He endorsed Trump two months later, and Trump went on to win the presidency. Cruz later supported several Trump administration policies and defended Trump during the Senate impeachment trial in 2020.

Cruz won reelection to the Senate in 2018 after a closely contested race against Democratic Congressman Beto O'Rourke. President Donald Trump campaigned for Cruz during the contest, and Cruz won approximately 51 percent of the vote.

During Trump's 2019 impeachment proceedings, Cruz hosted the podcast Verdict with Ted Cruz, using it to argue that Trump had acted within his executive powers in seeking an investigation related to Joe Biden's son, Hunter Biden. Cruz voted against convicting Trump in February 2020, when the Senate acquitted the president.

Cruz also appeared as himself in Undecided: The Movie and was credited as a producer and writer on the podcast series Verdict with Ted Cruz. He published the books A Time for Truth: Reigniting the Promise of America in 2015 and One Vote Away: How a Single Supreme Court Seat Can Change History in 2020.