U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson, D-Florida, promised he would launch a legal challenge to Cruz’s eligibility if the senator wins the GOP Presidential nomination.
“I’m waiting for the moment that he gets the nomination and then I will file that beautiful lawsuit saying he’s unqualified for the job because he’s ineligible,” Grayson added. “Call me crazy, but I think that the President of America should be an American.”
Grayson’s musing came the day after the New Hampshire Ballot Commission rejected efforts to remove Cruz from the primary ballot there over his birth outside the United States. After a roughly 80-minute hearing Tuesday, the five-member panel unanimously voted to uphold Secretary of State Bill Gardner's decision to put Cruz on the ballot.
Yet in a ruling set to be released in the coming days, the commission is not expected to provide much relief for Cruz supporters worried about the issue and could give more fodder to critics potentially lining up challenges in other states.
"It's not settled at all," said Brad Cook, a Manchester attorney who chairs the commission. "All we say is, 'Look, when there’s an unsettled question of law we’re not going to decide it.'"
Cruz has suggested that the issue was put to bed once and for all by a Harvard Law Review article published 12 days before he launched his campaign. In the article, two former top Justice Department lawyers, Paul Clement and Neal Katyal, wrote “there is no question that Senator Cruz has been a citizen from birth and is thus a ‘natural born Citizen’ within the meaning of the Constitution.”
“There are plenty of serious issues to debate in the upcoming presidential election cycle. The less time spent dealing with specious objections to candidate eligibility, the better,” said Clement and Katyal, who worked in the administrations of George W. Bush and Obama, respectively.
Among Cruz’s GOP rivals, the issue has only tangentially flared up so far. After Cruz made clear his opposition to birthright citizenship in August, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush suggested Cruz was among the GOP candidates who had benefited from it; Cruz countered that Bush was “getting confused between legal immigration and illegal immigration.” In May, a super PAC supporting U.S. Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky poked fun at Cruz’s birthplace in a video that labeled him the “capitulating Canadian” for voting for surveillance legislation backed by President Barack Obama.
Cruz was a dual citizen up until last year, when he completed the process of renouncing his Canadian citizenship. The Dallas Morning News first drew attention to Cruz's dual citizenship in 2013, months after he won election to the U.S. Senate and was already seen as a potential Presidential contender.
On Saturday, Cruz said he expects the issue to continue to be a political football.
“Will people raise this for political mischief? Sure. It’s politics. That’s what they do,” Cruz told Bishop, the teacher, in Chariton. “But as a legal matter ... it’s quite straightforward, and I don’t believe there is any impediment whatsoever.”
My question is, If his mother was a dual citizen at the time of his birth, does he still qualify? Was his mother a ‘natural born Citizen’ within the meaning of the Constitution?
NYC Wins When Everyone Can Vote! Michael H. Drucker
No comments:
Post a Comment