Posted on 10/03/2015 11:11:59 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
* Texas senator stresses his Cuban heritage on campaign trail
* His father was arrested and jailed on the island
* Some Hispanic voters dislike Cruz’s strident conservatism
Ted Cruz could have been a Miami cubanito.
His father, Rafael Bienvenido Cruz, desperate to flee Cuba after his youthful guerrilla activities landed him in jail, applied to the University of Texas, Louisiana State University — and the University of Miami. He chose Texas only because it was the first school to respond.
“If the University of Miami had let him in, I might be a Floridian right now,” Ted Cruz told the Miami Herald in an interview.
In any other presidential election, one without a pair of hometown contenders, Miami Republicans might have embraced Cruz as their own. Not his ideology, perhaps — the Texas senator is too hard-core even for some devoted conservatives — but his life story, certainly.
His grandfather toiled on a sugarcane plantation. His father survived jail only to find the rebel he had fought for — Fidel Castro — turned out to be a communist. Cruz clerked for the late U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist and helped plot a legal strategy for George W. Bush to win the White House during the infamous Florida recount.
Yet the first Cuban American to ever run for president is at best an afterthought in South Florida in a GOP race dominated locally by Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush.
That doesn’t mean Cruz has been a stranger.
He received a homecoming of sorts as the keynote speaker at the Miami-Dade Republican Party’s annual fundraiser last year....
(Excerpt) Read more at miamiherald.com ...
And you thought Batista was bad.
As far as I’m concerned Ted Cruz is a Floridian, if I lived in any other state he would be that also, he is first and foremost an American, an American dedicated to restoration of our Free Republic, our Constitution and with it the right of States to Govern themselves free from undue tyrannical law and regulation devised by a central government bent on absolute dominance, and the right of States to govern in accordance with the will of the people.
CRUZ... 2016!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.