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Sen. Ted Cruz '92 to announce presidential bid on Monday

U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz ’92 plans to announce a presidential bid on Monday, according to a Houston Chronicle article published on Saturday.

Cruz did not respond to a request for comment.

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Cruz will officially declare his candidacy at a convocation ceremony at Liberty University in Virginia on Monday, according to the Chronicle.

He is scheduled to make an appearance in New Hampshire this Friday and in Iowa in approximately two weeks.

Cruz was elected to the Senate as a Republican candidate from Texas in 2012 and is one of three Latino Senators currently serving.

Liberty University, which was founded by the televangelist Jerry Falwell, is significant as a choice of venue for Cruz, whose advisers have been outspoken about their belief that Cruz could win the Republican nomination without large support from moderates.

Cruz is expected to focus on a host of issues in his platform, according to the National Journal, including repealing the Affordable Care Act, passing a flat tax and abolishing the Internal Revenue Service. He has also supported fracking, the Keystone Pipeline, expanding access to public lands for oil exploration and repealing certain regulations of the Environmental Protection Agency.

Cruz graduated cum laude from the University as a Wilson School major. As a member of the American Whig-Cliosophic Society’s Debate Panel, he won the top speaker award at both the U.S. National Debating Championship and the North American Debating Championship.

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Cruz was the University’s highest-ranked debater at the World Universities Debating Championship. The University’s annual novice championship is called the Ted Cruz Living Memorial Novice Championship.

He won the U.S. National Speaker of the Year award and, along with his debate partner and roommate David Panton '92, won Team of the Year.

Panton explained that he and Cruz were very close, having roomed together for over three years at the University. Both Panton and Cruz swapped roommates freshman year, so they lived together for some of their freshman year and the entirety of their sophomore, junior and senior years. They both attended Harvard Law School at the same time and roomed together there as well, he said.

“I think Ted would make an exceptional and outstanding president of the United States," Panton said. "If he does decide to run, then I’d be thrilled and he’ll have my full support ... Ted, I believe, represents the goals and the leadership that America needs.”

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Cruz and Panton lived in Butler College, and Panton noted that Cruz joined Colonial Club,while Panton was a member of Tower Club.

Cruz’s senior year thesis was called “Clipping the Wings of Angels: The History and Theory behind the Ninth and Tenth Amendments of the United States Constitution.” His advisor was politics professor Robert George.

"It was a pleasure to work with Ted," George said. "I found him to be the kind of student who combines strong personal convictions with a genuine interest in ideas and arguments. Although we tended to agree about constitutional interpretation, we often found ourselves playing devil's advocate with each other. Someone who was eavesdropping would imagine that we were bitter opponents."

After law school, Cruz clerked in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and later for Chief Justice William Rehnquist in 1996.

After clerking, Cruz worked at Cooper, Carvin & Rosenthal until 1998, where he worked closely on cases about the National Rifle Association and helped prepare testimony against then-President Bill Clinton during his impeachment trial.

He later joined the Bush presidential campaign as a domestic policy adviser.After Bush took office, Cruz served as an associate deputy attorney general in the Justice Department and as the director of policy planning at the U.S. Federal Trade Commission.

In 2003, Cruz was appointed Solicitor General of Texas and served in that role until 2008. Cruz argued cases before the Supreme Court nine times, winning five and losing four.

After leaving his position as Solicitor General, Cruz worked at a private law firm in Houston until 2013, at which point he was sworn in as a U.S. Senator.

In September 2013, Cruz led a filibuster of the Affordable Care Act, holding the floor for 21 hours. A 16-day government shutdown ensued because congressional leaders felt pressured not to fund the government until the program was defunded, which it was not.