Ted Cruz: I’m Running for President [+video]

By Hunter Walker. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) launched his presidential campaign shortly after midnight on Monday with a brief message and video he posted on Twitter.

“I’m running for President and I hope to earn your support!” Cruz wrote in his tweet.

[Hear what Sen. Ted Cruz’s father has to say about his son’s run in this exclusive interview:]

Cruz has long been expected to throw his hat into the presidential race. His announcement made him the first major candidate to officially begin a campaign.

Cruz’s 30-second video features shots of nature, people riding motorcycles through the desert, children playing baseball and reciting the pledge of allegiance, multiple American flags, and a church. It closes with a shot of Cruz waving. (Read more from “Ted Cruz: I’m Running for President” HERE)

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Ted Cruz Plans to Announce Official Presidential Bid Later Today

By Theodore Schleifer. Sen. Ted Cruz plans to announce [later today] that he will run for president of the United States, according to his senior advisers, accelerating his already rapid three-year rise from a tea party insurgent in Texas into a divisive political force in Washington.

Cruz, scheduled to speak Monday at a convocation ceremony at Liberty University in Virginia, will not form an exploratory committee but rather launch a presidential bid outright, said advisers with direct knowledge of his plans, who spoke on condition of anonymity because an official announcement had not been made yet. They say he is done exploring and is now ready to become the first Republican presidential candidate.

Over the course of the primary campaign, Cruz will aim to raise between $40 million and $50 million, according to advisers, and dominate with the same tea party voters who supported his underdog senate campaign in 2012. But the key to victory, Cruz advisers believe, is to be the second choice of enough voters in the party’s libertarian and social conservative wings to cobble together a coalition to defeat the chosen candidate of the Republican establishment.

The firebrand Texan may have few Senate colleagues who will back his White House bid, but his appeal to his party’s base who vote disproportionately in Republican primaries could make him competitive in Iowa and beyond.

Yet critics of Cruz argue that he will have trouble raising high-dollar donations from traditional contributors, will land few endorsements from the nation’s political establishment and be unable to escape comparisons to President Barack Obama, who also ran for president in his first Senate term. And if he advances to a general election, Cruz trails likely Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton solidly in early public opinion polls. (Read more from “Ted Cruz to Announce 2016 Presidential Bid on Monday” HERE)

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