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Politico Wonders: Is TX Sen. Ted Cruz a ‘Natural Born Citizen’ Eligible to Run for the U.S. Presidency?

Jan. 8, 2013 8:05am Billy Hallowell

Only one week into his tenure as a Texas senator, Ted Cruz, 42, is already drawing presidential murmurs. While it’s certainly too early to tell what sort of leader Cruz will be, in practical terms, Politico raised a larger issue on Monday evening. Based on the fact that the politician was born to an American mother and a Cuban father in Canada, the outlet wondered if he is eligible to run for the American presidency.

Politico Ponders: Is Ted Cruz Eligible to Run for the American Presidency?

WASHINGTON, DC – NOVEMBER 13: GOP senator-elect Ted Cruz (R-TX), poses for a picture with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell at the U.S. Capitol on November 13, 2012 in Washington, DC. Credit: Getty Images

The question at the center of the discussion is hypothetical at this juncture, as there’s no indication that the new senator is interested in the role. According to some, the fact that he was born outside of the U.S. could cause constitutional complications and uncertainties that would potentially cloud a candidacy. However, there is no precedent to examine that answers the viability question definitively. Politico explains:

While there’s no legal precedent for Cruz’s situation, most constitutional scholars surveyed by POLITICO believe the 42-year-old tea party sensation would be OK. But there’s just enough gray area to stoke controversy, as Cruz learned during his campaign for Senate last year.

The U.S. Constitution states: “No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President…”

Based on the constitutional provision, the obvious question that follows is: What, exactly, is a “natural born citizen”? According to experts cited by Politico, answering this curiosity is somewhat difficult. In fact, Gabriel Chin, a professor at the University of Arizona who once argued that Sen. John McCain was not eligible to run for the presidency, admitted, “no one knows what a natural born citizen is.”

While some note uncertainty on the matter, others stake the claim that, despite being born in Canada, Cruz would automatically inherit his mother’s American citizenship at the time of his birth.

“Ted is a U.S. citizen by birth, having been born in Calgary to an American-born mother,” explained Sean Rushton, the senator’s spokesman.

Peter Spiro, a law professor at Temple University, agreed with this assessment, noting that the 14th Amendment grants citizenship to children born inside the U.S.; as for those born outside of the country, he argues that a congressional law grants them citizenship (pending their parents are citizens).

Sen.-elect Ted Cruz, R-Texas speaks to reporters prior to a freshman Senators luncheon on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, Nov. 13, 2012. Credit: AP

Even Chin, who argued against McCain’s eligibility, believes that Cruz is likely a viable candidate, should he choose to pursue the presidency. The professor’s past reaction to McCain was based on the fact that the Arizona senator was born one year before a 1937 law was enacted to deal with citizenship of individuals serving abroad (thus, he argued McCain wasn’t covered under the law).

Cruz and McCain aren’t the first politicians to encounter scrutiny surrounding their citizenship. Politico highlights some of the others who have also faced an uphill battle in this area (besides the obvious birtherism that has plagued Barack Obama):

In 1968, Republican George Romney, who was born in Mexico, was ensnared in a controversy about his own qualifications to run for president. Several Democratic congressmen at the time expressed “serious doubts” about the former Michigan governor’s eligibility. Scholars said a New York Law Journal article pointing out that Romney’s parents were U.S. citizens finally put critics’ claims to rest.

Even Barry Goldwater faced scrutiny over the issue because he was born in Arizona when it was still a territory.

None of these situations have ever stopped a candidate from running, and it’s unlikely that Cruz would be the first.

Courts have shown no interest in broaching the issue, leaving it to be debated in the political sphere.

Despite this analysis, it’s important to remember that Cruz is a newly-minted congressman. There’s no indication that he’s interested or seeking the presidency and such prospects, even if he does show an inclination, are years away. Still, on a grander scale, the discussion about natural born citizenship is pertinent — and one that seems continually unresolved.

(H/T: Politico)

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Comments (186)

lynnissmart
Posted on January 8, 2013 at 9:29am
The left knows that this guy is already a star in the Republican party….just trying to destroy him early on……makes me sick – these dirty filthy leftists!

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- Freedomlover_US
  Posted on January 8, 2013 at 11:46am
  More than 50% of the American public has an unfavorable view of the Tea Party, versus less than 30% who view it favorably. Believe me, we want him to run – he’ll win the primary and get crushed in the general election.
  
  Report this comment
- Government_Goodies
  Posted on January 8, 2013 at 12:49pm
  Lynn:
  
  Not sure what you’re worried about. No one’s going to unseat Santa Claus for POTUS.
  
  Report this comment
- needawhitepresident
  Posted on January 8, 2013 at 1:16pm
  @ FREEDOM LOVER: Keep going, you are making a great case that YOU are the idiot. You say that Obama was born in Hawaii – PROVE IT! Nobody else seems able to… Born in the United States does not automatically make one eligible to be president. Natural-born equals being born of a mother and a father BOTH of whom are U.S. citizens when the child is born, no matter what country they are born in. Obama has failed to prove as much, as has Rubio and Jindal. DemocRATS and ******** paid no attention to Article 2, Section 1, Clause 5 of the U.S. Constitution when they installed Obama (a known Islam sympathizer) so now Republicans and Tea Partiers should pay attention to it? Ha! Don’t think so!
  
  Report this comment
- VanceUppercut
  Posted on January 8, 2013 at 3:02pm
  Yes, how dare those dirty liberals question whether or not someone is actually an American! (spoken with a complete lack of self-awareness.)
  
  Report this comment
- n2sooners
  Posted on January 8, 2013 at 3:52pm
  Am I the only one who finds it humorous that it is only birtherism when you question Obama’s eligibility and not when you question the eligibility of those lighter skinned republicans?
  
  Report this comment
- Silversmith
  Posted on January 8, 2013 at 5:50pm
  Hey Vance – Everyone should pass the test for eligibility. Stay partisan – stay dumb.
  
  Silversmith
  
  Report this comment
- rp454
  Posted on January 8, 2013 at 6:33pm
  @freedom_lover
  
  99% of the population likes food on the store shelves and the electric to come on when you hit the switch. 100% are going to find out what it’s like not to have these things if you keep voting on popularity and who will give out the most stuff.
  
  Report this comment
kat747
Posted on January 8, 2013 at 9:20am
The USA does have a legal precedent for a candidate for President who has an unmarried American mother and non-USA citizen father and was born outside the USA.
There is a clip on YouTube where a current President admits he was not born in the USA and is not a natural born citizen.
Hence…your precedent.

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ginger100
Posted on January 8, 2013 at 9:14am
at least he was born in north amerikan continent. thats closer than HI or Africa

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taintso
Posted on January 8, 2013 at 9:12am
A President who is ‘Natural Born’ would have grown up hearing stories from his father and grand father about there life here in our republic. And most likely how they defended the Constitution by going to war to protect the freedom for those not born yet. Not first generation citizens who would have heard stories of how their mother sneaked across the border to have a US citizen child, or a wet foot dry foot, or the child of a surrogate mother having the baby for parents who are not citizens.
Which would you rather have ‘Natural Born Citizen’ with history and family in our republic or a first generation 14th citizen wanting what is best for his foreign family and Friends?

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SocialistSlayer
Posted on January 8, 2013 at 9:06am
Who Cares ? I’m not voting for these Traitor Republicans any way ! We need a House Cleaning – Literally !

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- Adam_ME
  Posted on January 8, 2013 at 10:10am
  Uh, Cruz just got sworn in a few days ago. How could he be traitorous in that brief period of time?
  
  Report this comment
- SocialistSlayer
  Posted on January 8, 2013 at 12:39pm
  Uh —– He’s a Politician you fool !
  
  Report this comment
- SimpleTruths
  Posted on January 8, 2013 at 4:58pm
  So you would propose what? Running house cleaners for the House, Senate, President? Yeah that should get a lot of traction. No matter who you run, call them what you want, they still have to know their way around politics, its how things work.
  
  Report this comment
jakartaman
Posted on January 8, 2013 at 9:03am
Where was these dopes 5 years ago along with all the MSM.
Thsi country is doomed – We have a proven socialist in office – the debate is over.
Obama want to and has a member of the world one government – Nanny state.
The federal government needs to be DRASTICALLY cut by over 3/4ths and power given back to the states – lock and load kids its a commin

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- Winedude
  Posted on January 8, 2013 at 11:24am
  Conservatives, as stereotyped by Teabaggers, are America’s lost souls. A
  maladjusted generation who will waste themselves away pining for their
  fantasy white America that is long lost forevermore, unable to
  understand that they lost not because of how they said things but
  because of the things they said. When they lose, they can only lose
  because somebody cheated them. When they win, it was God’s grace or
  their manifest destiny. The sooner these cyclops die out, the easier the
  transition of the USA into the 21st century. Obama is the now and for the next four years. Get over it, or not. Really makes no big diff to me, we don’t need you anymore.
  
  Report this comment
- LIBSALWAYSLIE
  Posted on January 8, 2013 at 12:43pm
  WINE, you can keep telling yourself lies over and over, but they’re sill lies. Your mind is to filled with liberal garbage to allow you to see the truth. The TEA party has far more support than you claim. The TEA party is NOT interested in an all white society as you claim, thats nonsense. You swallow the liberal lies without question, which make you one of the blind sheep, a pawn in the progressive agenda.
  
  Report this comment
taintso
Posted on January 8, 2013 at 8:56am
Natural law is the idea that there is an objective moral order, grounded in essential humanity, that holds universal and permanent implications for the ways we should conduct ourselves as free and responsible human beings.
Natural law reasoning might apply to a range of hotly debated contemporary issues. In the legal arena, you will consider the debates over human rights and the use of the courts in promoting social reform during periods when consensus has not yet developed.
Natural law, to its credit, retains an emphasis on human reason that is not to be found in the many forms of contemporary thought that treat humans primarily as willing, rather than thinking, beings.
Through Natural Law, we can recognize the essential moral dignity and stature of man, while giving powerful expression to the yearning for, and fundamental right to, life, liberty and dignity by virtue of the “universality, objectivity and intelligibility” of the nature which we as humans beings all possess and share.

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SquidVetOhio
Posted on January 8, 2013 at 8:56am
HA! Like that matters anymore.

Since we have “laxed” the definition of “natural born citizen”, I say we get BiBi Netanyahu to run for president next time around. Or, as I like to call him, the Kosher Reagan.

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zorro
Posted on January 8, 2013 at 8:54am
Not this freakin’ garbage again. Knock it off people….

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- Walkabout
  Posted on January 8, 2013 at 10:41am
  According to experts cited by Politico, answering this curiosity is somewhat difficult. In fact, Gabriel Chin, a professor at the University of Arizona who once argued that Sen. John McCain was not eligible to run for the presidency, admitted, “no one knows what a natural born citizen is.”
  
  Gabriel Chin is a lying, conniving leftist. How could she argue that Senator John McCain was not eligible to run for the presidency, admitted, “no one knows what a natural born citizen is.”
  
  Those 2 statements don’t go together.
  - Senator John McCain was not eligible to run for the presidency
  - admitted, “no one knows what a natural born citizen is.”
  
  So if you are an American citizen serving in the military & your kids are born overseas, moronic leftist, progressive, liberal trash will argue that your kids should not be eligible to run for president.
  
  Does that make sense.
  
  We in this country are shacked to lying, conniving people such as Gabriel Chin. That cannot end well for us. They use all their intellect for money & position and will use any sophistry that readily comes to their lips.
  
  Report this comment
Zatoichi
Posted on January 8, 2013 at 8:54am
Just love it how they bypass the Constitution and say it’s too old and irrelevant but then quote it when it suits them. What a bunch of lying deceiving hypocrites.

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SamIamTwo
Posted on January 8, 2013 at 8:52am
Nice…you are the one spewing about junk.

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tarpon
Posted on January 8, 2013 at 8:51am
did they ever wonder if Obama was actually a natural born citizen? clue he is not.

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wingedwolf
Posted on January 8, 2013 at 8:48am
If this piece of arab filth in the white hut’s credentials are good enough, so are cruz’s.

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- poorrichard09
  Posted on January 8, 2013 at 8:59am
  What were the requirements for the current prez? If he can get in, Cruz should too.
  
  BTW, why is it when someone can have a cogent thought and express it well, suddenly people think he should be president? Cruz is a good man, but let’s give him some time.
  
  Report this comment
Cabo King
Posted on January 8, 2013 at 8:47am
Since when did that stop anyone??? lol

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SpankDaMonkey
Posted on January 8, 2013 at 8:46am
.
Who the Hell cares?………..

The Free Lunch & the PC White Obama Voting Moron Crowd won’t vote for him anyway, and their aren’t enough of the Rest of US to make a difference sad to say……….

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- ExtremeRight
  Posted on January 8, 2013 at 9:01am
  That is right more people on the wagon then are pulling the wagon… “The tyranny of the majority” …..You are enslaved.
  
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- T-2
  Posted on January 8, 2013 at 9:24am
  I heard Ted Cruz is a Chinaman.
  
  Report this comment
- Government_Goodies
  Posted on January 8, 2013 at 12:50pm
  What Spank said.
  
  Report this comment
kcsparky
Posted on January 8, 2013 at 8:45am
Politico is one of the last “news” organizations that should be mentioning ANYTHING about citizenship of a politician. They have been in Obama’s back pocket for four years and have never questioned him. Bring in a conservative Representative who shows immediate moxy and common sense and liberals attack with a hypocritical intensity that would be funny, if not so pathetic. Cruz is sharp, focused and approaches things with a lot of common sense. Politico really should take a good look at him…..and then at themselves in the mirror!

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hempstead1944
Posted on January 8, 2013 at 8:35am
More “Natural Born” than Obama……for sure.

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searching for the Truth
Posted on January 8, 2013 at 8:34am
Arguing the case for ” Divided Loyalties,” is useless – if one doesn’t know the difference.

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taintso
Posted on January 8, 2013 at 8:32am
Natural-Born Citizen Defined
One universal point most all early publicists agreed on was natural-born citizen must mean one who is a citizen by no act of law. If a person owes their citizenship to some act of law (naturalization for example), they cannot be considered a natural-born citizen. This leads us to defining natural-born citizen under the laws of nature – laws the founders recognized and embraced.
Under the laws of nature, every child born requires no act of law to establish the fact the child inherits through nature his/her father’s citizenship as well as his name (or even his property) through birth. This law of nature is also recognized by law of nations. Sen. Howard said the citizenship clause under the Fourteenth Amendment was by virtue of “natural law and national law.”
The advantages of Natural Law is competing allegiances between nations are not claimed, or at least with those nations whose custom is to not make citizens of other countries citizens without their consent. Any alternations or conflicts due to a child’s natural citizenship are strictly a creature of local municipal law. In the year 1866, the United States for the first time adopted a local municipal law under Sec. 1992 of U.S. Revised Statutes that read: “All persons born in the United States and not subject to any foreign power, excluding Indians not taxed, are declared to be citizens of the United States.”
Rep. John A. Bingham commenting on Section 1992 said it means “every

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- taintso
  Posted on January 8, 2013 at 8:41am
  Rep. John A. Bingham commenting on Section 1992 said it means “every human being born within the jurisdiction of the United States of parents not owing allegiance to any foreign sovereignty is, in the language of your Constitution itself, a natural born citizen.” (Cong.
  
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- taintso
  Posted on January 8, 2013 at 8:52am
  Bingham had asserted the same thing in 1862 as well:
  Does the gentleman mean that any person, born within the limits of the Republic, and who has offended against no law, can rightfully be exiled from any State or from any rood of the Republic? Does the gentleman undertake to say that here, in the face of the provision in the Constitution, that persons born within the limits of the Republic, of parents who are not the subjects of any other sovereignty, are native-born citizens, whether they be black or white? There is not a textbook referred to in any court which does not recognise the principle that I assert. (Cong. Globe, 37th, 2nd Sess., 407 (1862))
  
  Report this comment
ColoradoMaverick
Posted on January 8, 2013 at 8:31am
I think the precedent was already set when America elected a bastard Muslim from Kenya.

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- taintso
  Posted on January 8, 2013 at 8:38am
  He is not natural born as his father was not a citizen, the 14th doesn’t trump ART. II. And now that we have surrogate mothers here in the US giving birth to children to parents which neither are US citizens just so their child will have US citizenship. what a slippery slope we have created. The 14th should be moot as it was to give the children of slaves citizenship.
  
  Report this comment
taxpro4u03
Posted on January 8, 2013 at 8:30am
It depends on what the definition of ‘is,’ is — There are a few dates that we must come to terms with, as a People — without getting all ‘subjective’ and ‘emotional.’ in the ABSENCE of superior substantive evidence to the contrary – ‘truth’ is that which has been adjudicated to HOLD that position as ‘truth…’ April 24. 1863; – ** July 27, 1868 ** — July 28, 1868 — do your OWN ‘homework…’ :-) an American citizen differs at law from a Untied States Citizen. — ‘Why?’ — saying a lamb has 5 legs and making it ‘legal’ doesn’t make it SO…

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- lordjosh
  Posted on January 8, 2013 at 10:27am
  Good job, my friend. No franchise here!
  
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ares338
Posted on January 8, 2013 at 8:24am
Oh now they worry about b “natural born”!

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jcizarter
Posted on January 8, 2013 at 8:13am
Why would Politico worry about having a President in the WH with papers? It has not bothered them so far.

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- jcizarter
  Posted on January 8, 2013 at 8:20am
  Since when is Politico consulting the Constitution of the USA?
  
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- oldguy49
  Posted on January 8, 2013 at 8:21am
  what ?………..lets get someone that doesn’t do this for a liveing next time
  
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ArmedAndReallyPissed
Posted on January 8, 2013 at 8:09am
Since when does a person have to be a Natural Born Citizen to run or be President ?

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- dogmeat
  Posted on January 8, 2013 at 2:39pm
  @MUFFYTHETUFFY IF MR.B.O. has one, LETS see it! Not the Photo-shopped piece of trash he tried to pass off as a birth CERTIFICATE! In itself a CRIME!
  
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kickagrandma
Posted on January 8, 2013 at 8:09am
Where were you/are you on the man who stole the presidency not once, but twice? he is NOT a “natural – born-citizen” of these UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

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- Marine25
  Posted on January 8, 2013 at 9:15am
  Hawaiibecame a state on August 21, 1959. The President was born there in 1961. His birth certificate and the birth announcements sent to the papers by the hospital show that to be the case. Anyone who thinks otherwise is an idiot…or worse
  
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- taintso
  Posted on January 8, 2013 at 10:21am
  It is not where he was born or if he is a citizen or not. It is is a fact his father was not making him Not Natural Born.
  
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