HUDSON, N.H. — Texas Sen. Ted Cruz’s supporters have a message for fellow Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump: Nobody knows whether Cruz qualifies to be president better than Cruz himself.
“Maybe Donald Trump should ask Cruz if he’s eligible,” suggests Robert Vachon, 44, who’s a fan of both Cruz and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul.
After all, notes Mike Calkins, 66, of Central Massachusetts, “this guy is a constitutional scholar educated at Harvard and Princeton.”
“He was top of his debate class. He’s absolutely qualified or he wouldn’t be wasting his time,” he adds.
Calkins, a loyal Cruz supporter, says the only other Republican he’d vote for is former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee. He and his son traveled 50 plus miles to attend the Texas senator’s Second Amendment rally Tuesday.
“For me, there’s only one guy who needs to be president of the U.S. and that’s this guy right here,” he says, pointing his mitten-clad hand to the stage set for Cruz.
Like Calkins, Lori Levi, a Michigan-based volunteer for the Cruz campaign, says Cruz wouldn’t have made it as far as entering a cutthroat presidential contest if he harbored any major concerns about his eligibility.
“Ted Cruz knows the Constitution better than anyone,” Levi told the Washington Examiner. “He wouldn’t have run for the Senate [in 2012] if it was an issue and he certainly wouldn’t have run for the White House.”
Just one day before Cruz arrived in the Granite State Tuesday, Trump told voters in nearby Windham the anti-establishment senator “has a problem.”
“Whether you like it or not, Ted has to figure it out,” he posited. “It’s wrong to say it’s a settled matter because it’s absolutely not a settled matter.”
But Cruz claims questions about his citizenship are nothing more than “political noise.”
“As a legal matter, the question is quite straightforward and settled law that the child of a U.S. citizen born abroad is a natural born citizen,” he told reporters during a campaign stop last week. “People will continue to make political noise about it but as a legal matter it is quite straightforward.”
McKenzie Franck, 20, an undecided first-time voter in New York’s presidential primary, seemed to agree. “I don’t think it’s an issue at all. I feel like [Trump] is just trying to cause controversy.”
Her friend, Samantha Coons, took a different approach, suggesting that, in this case, perhaps it’s in Cruz’s best interest to err on the side of caution.
“I think he should have it looked into just so people can’t question him,” she said.
Cruz is currently second in the Washington Examiner‘s presidential power rankings.
