Rafael Edward Cruz (; born December 22, 1970) is an American politician, attorney, and political commentator serving as the junior United States senator from Texas since 2013. A member of the Republican Party, Cruz was the solicitor general of Texas from 2003 to 2008. After graduating from Princeton University and Harvard Law School, Cruz pursued a career in politics, later working as a policy advisor in the George W. Bush administration. In 2003, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott appointed Cruz to serve as Solicitor General, a position he held through 2008. In 2012, Cruz was elected to the U.S. Senate, becoming the first Hispanic-American to serve as a U.S. senator from Texas. In the Senate, he has taken consistently conservative positions on economic and social policy; he played a leading role in the 2013 United States federal government shutdown, seeking to force Congress and President Barack Obama to defund the Affordable Care Act. He was reelected in a close Senate race in 2018 against Democratic candidate Beto O'Rourke. On March 23, 2015, Cruz announced he was running for president. Despite having only been a senator for two years, he emerged as a serious contender in the Republican primaries. The competition for the Republican presidential nomination between Cruz and front-runner Donald Trump was heated and characterized by a series of public personal attacks. After Trump won the nomination, Cruz initially declined to endorse him, but he became a staunch supporter of Trump during his presidency. After the January 2021 Capitol attack, Cruz received widespread political and popular backlash for objecting to the certification of Joe Biden's victory in the 2020 presidential election and giving credence to the false claim that the election was fraudulent.Cruz is running for reelection to the Senate in 2024 against Democratic nominee Colin Allred and other third-party candidates.