Free Republic

In awarding its first-ever Latino Leadership Award, the University of Texas at Austin hoped to highlight its longtime work in establishing a Mexican-American studies center and department. It used the celebratory occasion, in fact, to announce a new Latino Research Initiative at UT. But giving that inaugural prize to Texas Land Commissioner George P. Bush — whose resume might read as thin as U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz’s on Latino issues — triggered criticism from Latino academics and activists on and off campus. Bestowed by outgoing and embattled university President Bill Powers, the UT Center for Mexican American Studies (CMAS), the...

UT President Bill Powers presented land commissioner George P. Bush the inaugural Latino Leadership Award on Monday evening. The president’s office worked in conjunction with the Center of Mexican American Studies and the Department of Mexican American and Latina/o Studies to select Bush as the first awardee, said Dr. Nicole Guidotti-Hernández, associate director of the Center for Mexican American Studies. “We went through a series of 15 nominees, and we evaluated them for leadership, public service and areas like that,” Guidotti-Hernández said. “With him as the first Latino land commissioner, I think in its [179-year] history of the office, we...

George P. Bush stood in front of the lectern with its official seal. Behind him, flags bracketed the picture of a majestic white building. For just under 10 minutes, Bush talked about all that he had accomplished in the whirlwind of his first 100 days in office. Bush is in his first term as Texas land commissioner, the seal on the podium is that of the General Land Office, and the building depicted behind him is the mid-19th Century General Land Office building that now serves as the Capitol Visitors Center. But looking at Wednesday’s tableau, you could be forgiven...

Can Republicans win the hearts and votes of Hispanics? Is Sen. Ted Cruz, son of a Cuban immigrant, a candidate who can make a breakthrough with that crucial segment of the electorate? Texas, Cruz noted at a forum with the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, “is the only majority-minority state in the country that is solidly Republican.” And he added, “It’s not rocket science that if Republicans continue to get clobbered in the Hispanic community it won’t stay solidly Republican.” Javier Palomarez, president and chief executive of the chamber, teed up the issue by noting that President Barack Obama won...

Javier Palomarez, president of the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, recently said he believes any new U.S. president will only be elected to office if he or she openly courts Latino voters. He was speaking to Sen. Ted Cruz, who is of Cuba descent, during a question-and-answer session in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday. But it’s something that former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush seems to have taken to heart. Bush, who has yet to announce he will seek the Republican presidential nomination, has been actively courting the Hispanic community. It doesn’t seem to matter to the former Florida governor that Hispanic...

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) took his presidential campaign to the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce this week, where he raised a provocative point about, of all things, panhandling. Benjy Sarlin reported: “If you look at the values that resonate in our community, they are faith, family, patriotism, hard work,” he told host Javier Palomarez, the CEO of the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. “Some years ago I was having lunch with a Hispanic entrepreneur in Austin and he asked me a question: He said, ‘When was the last time you saw a Hispanic panhandler?’ It’s a great question…. I’m not sure I’ve...

Former Florida governor Jeb Bush and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz will both be making overtures to Hispanic voters Wednesday, speaking to national groups on issues that could increase their appeal within the rapidly growing voting bloc in the 2016 election. What they will discuss -- and how they will discuss it -- could provide a preview for the different way in which the two candidates will reach out to Hispanics once the primary season is properly underway. Fresh off a trip from Puerto Rico, Bush on Wednesday will speak the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference in Houston, a gathering of...

This is kinda surprising: Fox News conservative pundit Andrea Tantaros is reportedly dating Jane’s Addiction guitarist Dave Navarro. According to Us Weekly, the pair have been spotted canoodling around New York City and have been dating for a few months since being introduced by mutual friends. Navarro is 47 years old, Tantaros is 36. “Even though they seem like opposites, they have a lot in common. They both have a wicked sense of humor and share a love of politics and dark eyeliner,” a source told Us. They certainly don’t seem like political opposites, however, as Navarro performed at the...

Good morning Austin: I had a story in Saturday’s paper on the startling fact that, with Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, two of the first three announced candidates for the Republican presidential nomination for president are Hispanic. In other words, if America elects its first Latino president in 2016, that president would almost certainly be a Republican. Meanwhile, on the Democratic side, at best there could be a Hispanic candidate for vice president, with most of the speculation concentrated on Julián Castro, the former San Antonio mayor who is now serving as President Obama’s secretary of housing and urban development....

Sen. Ted Cruz, the Texas Republican who is running for president, plans to meet with the head of a national Latino organization who accused the lawmaker of distancing himself from his ethnic community. Cruz is scheduled to meet on April 29 with Javier Palomarez, president and CEO of the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, and hold a question-and-answer session in Washington D.C. before an audience of business leaders and journalists. “The Hispanic Chamber is an important constituency,” said Rick Tyler, the national spokesman for the Cruz campaign. “We’re going to have a conversation, the host and the senator. They will...

WASHINGTON — Ted Cruz has a Latino name. He has a Latino background. And he’s one of the few Latinos to have ever run for the presidential nomination of a major party. But is he Latino enough? The Hispanic community in his home state of Texas gave him some but not overwhelming support when he was elected to the Senate in 2012. And mostly Democratic Latinos nationwide are more wary than ever after Cruz’s relentless criticism of immigration reform and the new health care law. His father is a Cuban exile, and the Republican senator from Texas touts his father...

Likely Republican presidential contender Jeb Bush, who was popular among Spanish-speaking voters while Florida governor, marked himself as "Hispanic" on a 2009 voter registration application, The New York Times reported on Monday. The newspaper posted a fuzzy copy of the form, which it said it obtained from the Miami-Dade County Elections Department. The circle marked "Hispanic" was checked. The next circle said "White, not Hispanic" and was not checked. "My mistake! Don't think I've fooled anyone!" Bush wrote on Twitter on Monday, responding to a message from his son calling him an "honorary" Latino....

Ted Cruz’s official campaign isn’t even two weeks old, and already it’s done the nation a favor—by highlighting the duplicity of the “multicultural” left and what it is really after. Ever since Cruz announced his candidacy for president, “Latino leaders” have been stepping all over themselves to declare that not only does he not speak for Hispanics (something only they presumably do) but he’s not even a “legitimate” Hispanic. All of which serves to pull the curtain back on multiculturalism: Defined by liberals, it’s a concept that exists solely to advance liberal objectives. It’s not ancestry that makes one a...

Sen. Ted Cruz, Republican from Texas, a few days ago became the first formally declared presidential candidate for next year’s election. Although Cruz is a Latino of Cuban-American background, I want to give five reasons (there are more) why most Latinos will not or should not support Cruz, who was just elected two years ago. The first reason is that he seems to have little affinity with Latinos, including the large Mexican-American population in his own home state of Texas. Indeed, Cruz is an anomaly in that state due to his Cuban-American background. He was raised outside of the state...

U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz is vying to become the nation's first Latino president, but the conservative Republican won't be able to count on Hispanic voters in 2016. Despite his heritage, Cruz, the son of a Cuban immigrant, is unlikely to rally voters around his potentially historic candidacy the way President Barack Obama did in 2008, when black, Hispanic and other important voting demographics were eager to elect the nation's first African-American commander in chief. "I can't envision any scenario in which Ted Cruz can make any appeal to Latinos at this point," said Matt Barreto, co-founder of the polling and...

Ted Cruz’s official campaign isn’t even two weeks old, and already it’s done the nation a favor — by highlighting the duplicity of the “multicultural” left and what it is really after. Ever since Cruz announced his candidacy for president, “Latino leaders” have been stepping all over themselves to declare that not only does he not speak for Hispanics (something only they presumably do) but he’s not even a “legitimate” Hispanic. All of which serves to pull the curtain back on multiculturalism: Defined by liberals, it’s a concept that exists solely to advance liberal objectives. It’s not ancestry that makes...

Ted Cruz won’t sit around and wait, because waiting is a loser’s game. Cruz, the first-term Republican senator from Texas, officially announced his candidacy for president of the United States early Monday morning. While there are many fascinating aspects to Cruz’s candidacy announcement—his climate change denials, his political grandstanding that led to a government shutdown— there is one question that immediately arises in my mind: What will he, a Cuban-American, do to speak directly to Latino voters over the next several months? Cruz has been dismissed in the past for not being “Latino enough.” And although he doesn’t speak fluent...

Rafael Edward "Ted" Cruz, native of Canada, junior senator of Texas and lover of Wagner, has thrown his hat into the ring to be the Republican nominee for the 2016 presidential election. But it's not his hat that many recoil from so much as it is the head beneath it. Let's talk about the elephant in Ted Cruz's presidential campaign: his face. OK, it's symmetrical in its composition, not too pudgy or gaunt -- all in all, a fine face, really. Some might even say he has the face of an angel. Not me, mind you, but some. Like the...

When John McCain launched his candidacy for president in 1999, the Arizonan made his announcement in front of the decommissioned aircraft carrier the USS Yorktown to underscore his military service. When Texas US Senator Ted Cruz jumped into the race for president on Monday, he did so on the “deck” of an “evangelical battleship” at the Rev. Jerry Falwell-founded Liberty University. Considering the major influence evangelical voters have in the GOP primaries, especially in the early states of Iowa and South Carolina, Cruz could not have been shrewder in selecting a venue for his declaration of candidacy. Rick Santorum would...

Latinos likely haven't made up their minds about Republican Sen. Ted Cruz's newly announced candidacy for President. So in a selfless gesture, a whole slew of non-Latinos have quickly stepped forward to spare us the trouble of thinking for ourselves about whether Cruz stands a chance of winning and whether he can get the votes of fellow Latinos. The answers were "No" and "No." Here's the conventional wisdom, courtesy of the liberal media and other critics of the junior senator from Texas: Cruz doesn't have the slimmest chance to win the Republican nomination, let alone to eventually become President. Which...