Ted Cruz aims to win the West

MSN / The Hill ^ | April 2, 2015 | Timothy Cama, energy & envirnmental reporter, The Hill

[2ndDivisionVet]

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) is making a play for the West in the 2016 race by touting his opposition to the federal government’s expansive land holdings.

Cruz’s disdain for federal land control is resonating with Westerners whose lives are impacted by land managers, and could help him win over conservatives in Nevada, one of the early nominating states in the presidential contest.

“This is an issue he’s been focused on for quite some time, and it’s one that plays extremely well with the conservative base in the western part of the United States,” said Ford O’Connell, a GOP strategist who advised the 2008 presidential campaign of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.)

Nationwide, the government owns nearly 630 million acres, a landmass bigger than Alaska and California combined. Most of that land, managed by agencies like the Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service, is located in states west of the Mississippi River.

Federal control is particularly heavy in Nevada, where the government owns 81 percent of all land, the most of any state.

“This is something that has been a perennial issue in the West since it became part of the United States,” said James McCarthy, a historian at Clark University. “It’s a staple of western politics to complain about that.”

O’Connell said Nevada is especially receptive to issues of land rights, and said opposing federal control could play “extremely well” there for Cruz....

[2ndDivisionVet]

“He really needs to get some traction, because he’s lingering in the polls, and he needs some elbow room in this potentially crowded field,” he said.

Ol' Ford O’Connell needs to start reading a newspaper or the Internet. He's a few weeks behind on the polls. No wonder McCain flamed out, with staffers like that.

[onyx]

CRUZ or lose.

CRUZ or lose.

[Paladin2]

Send the IRS agents into Mexico to disarm the peeps given the F&F weapons.

[Din Maker]

Wow! Is RTC brilliant or what? Who'd have ever thought of this as a campaign issue that could be a really big deal. I encourage everyone to read the entire article. This part especially leaped out at me:

Should the senator seek to build a firewall for his campaign in Nevada, he could tout his work on land issues in the Senate, such as his sponsorship of amendments that would prohibit the Interior Department and Forest Service from owning more than half the land in any state.

That's for the few on here who express "concern" over RTC's achievements and have asked: "What has he done in the Senate?". Stay tuned, and you just might be surprised.