Back in Texas — Solicitor General. Cruz then returned to his home state of Texas to serve as Solicitor General of Texas from 2003 to 2008. As Solicitor General, Cruz was the state’s chief appellate lawyer. He was also the youngest, the first Hispanic, and the longest-serving, solicitor general in Texas history.
At the firm, Cruz worked on matters relating to the National Rifle Association and helped prepare testimony for the impeachment proceedings against President Bill Clinton. In 1998, Cruz was briefly one of the attorneys who represented Representative John Boehner during his litigation against Representative Jim McDermott over the alleged leak of an illegal recording of a phone conversation whose participants included Boehner.
Cruz served as a law clerk to J. Michael Luttig of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in 1995 and to William Rehnquist, Chief Justice of the United States, in 1996.
In 2013, Cruz voted against a bill to provide a package of federal aid to the Northern East Coast for recovery from Hurricane Sandy because, he said, the bill was "filled with unrelated pork" and "two-thirds of that bill had nothing to do with Sandy". The Washington Post disputed this, writing that "the bill was largely aimed at dealing with Sandy, along with relatively minor items to address other or future disasters." The New York Times wrote that "of 23 examples of extraneous spending that a spokesman for Mr. Cruz provided, all but one—$195 million in discretionary funds for the secretary of health and human services—were Sandy-related or sought to mitigate future storms, as the law required."
In his first two years in the Senate, Cruz attended 17 of 50 public Armed Services Committee hearings, 3 of 25 Commerce Committee hearings, and 4 of the 12 Judiciary Committee hearings, and he missed 21 of 135 roll call votes during the first three months of 2015.
Rafael Edward Cruz was born on December 22, 1970, at Foothills Medical Centre in Calgary, Canada, to Eleanor Elizabeth ( née Darragh) Wilson and Rafael Cruz. Eleanor Wilson was born in Wilmington, Delaware. She is of three-quarters Irish and one-quarter Italian descent, and earned an undergraduate degree in mathematics from Rice University in the 1950s.
In March 2016, about seven months before the forthcoming presidential election, Cruz argued the Senate should not consider Obama's nominee to the Supreme Court on the grounds that "this should be a decision for the people. Let the election decide. If the Democrats want to replace this nominee, they need to win the election". In September 2020, less than two months before the next presidential election, Cruz supported an immediate vote on Trump's nominee to fill the Supreme Court vacancy caused by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg 's death.
Cruz gave a 21-hour Senate speech in an effort to hold up a federal budget bill and thereby defund the Affordable Care Act. Cruz persuaded the House of Representatives and House Speaker John Boehner to include an ACA defunding provision in the bill. In the U.S. Senate, former Majority Leader Harry Reid blocked the filibuster attempt because only 18 Republican Senators supported the filibuster. During the filibuster he read Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss. To supporters, the move "signaled the depth of Cruz's commitment to rein in government". This move was extremely popular among Cruz supporters, with Rick Manning of Americans for Limited Government naming Cruz "2013 Person of the Year" in an op-ed in The Hill, primarily for his filibuster against the Affordable Care Act. Cruz was also named "2013 Man of the Year" by conservative publications TheBlaze, and The American Spectator, "2013 Conservative of the Year" by Townhall.com, and "2013 Statesman of the Year" by the Republican Party of Sarasota County, Florida. He was a finalist for Time magazine's "Person of the Year" in 2013. To critics, including some Republican colleagues such as Senator Lindsey Graham, the move was ineffective.
During his political career, Cruz has been an advocate of tort reform —the effort pushed by conservatives and business interests to restrict malpractice and other wrongful injury and death lawsuits and to limit how much a jury can award a harmed individual for pain and suffering and in punitive damages.
Both cases were gruesome. In the first, Barbara Barber, an active 78-year-old resident at a ManorCare nursing home in Albuquerque, ble d to death over several days in 2004. Her daughter sued the Ohio-based ManorCare Inc., one of the largest for-profit operators of nursing homes in the nation, for wrongful death.
Carl Bettinger, a prominent plaintiff’s attorney in New Mexico representing the family, said at the time the message was “that little people can take on the big corporations and sometimes achieve justice.”. He later told Mother Jones that Cruz had been “very involved in the settlement negotiation.”.
Bush's 2000 presidential campaign. Cruz explained to The New Yorker, "I essentially had responsibility for all the policy that touched on law" during the campaign. He also acted on Bush's behalf during the fight for a recount of Florida's election results.
Government Shutdown. After taking office in 2013, Cruz made a name for himself with his speeches and tactics. He was instrumental in bringing about the government shutdown that year after his 21-hour speech against President Barack Obama 's healthcare plan.
As the son of a Cuban immigrant, Cruz said he “celebrates legal immigration,” according to his official website. In 2014, Cruz proposed legislation to prevent President Obama from expanding amnesty, and he served as a vocal critic of the Obama administration’s immigration policies.
The senator said he would remain in Texas for 14 days as part of efforts to self-quarantine. Cruz made headlines in February 2021 after heading to Cancun, Mexico amid a weather crisis in Texas, where millions were without electricity.
Conservative politician Ted Cruz grew up in Houston, Texas, earning his bachelor's at Princeton University and going on to Harvard Law School. Cruz served as an adviser on the 2000 presidential campaign of George W. Bush and became solicitor general of Texas in 2003. He won election to the U.S.
His mother, Eleanor, was born in the United States and met his father when she was a student at Rice University. Cruz's parents split up for a time, but they reunited after Rafael developed a newfound interest in religion. Cruz demonstrated his gift for public speaking at an early age.
After ending his quest for the White House, Cruz resumed his Senate duties, where he has served on the Committee on Foreign Relations and chaired the Subcommittee on the Constitution and the Subcommittee on Aviation and Space.