Ted Cruz's Houston past molded today's 2016 contender

Rick Jervis | USA TODAY

HOUSTON — Long before he became a leading presidential candidate, Rafael Edward Cruz was a bright, ambitious teenager who memorized chunks of the U.S. Constitution and had a love for free market principles, as well as a penchant for occasional trouble.

Today, Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz — as he’s more widely known — ranks near the top of the polls in the crowded GOP presidential field and has amassed an impressive war chest for the 2016 race.

In Washington, though, he’s rankled leaders of his own party by calling out Republican colleagues on issues and taking seemingly contrarian positions on a litany of subjects. His 21-hour filibuster in 2013 over the Affordable Care Act led to a temporary government shutdown and cemented his anti-establishment role.

Cruz’s mercurial trajectory from bookish drama student to Senate rebel surprised few of those who knew him as a high school teen and into his college years at Princeton University and Harvard Law School.

“Ted was never a company man,’’ said Robert George, Cruz’s Princeton professor who supervised his thesis work. “He thinks for himself. He always did. He asks questions and, if he’s not satisfied with the party line, he’s going to break free.”

Cruz’s questioning of authority and dogged stands on issues may have become evident in Princeton — where he was a debate champion — but they were forged while growing up in the well-to-do western stretches of Houston.

He was a self-described “geeky kid” in elementary and junior high, the child of two mathematicians and naturally good at school. But by junior high, Cruz decided to shake off his bookworm persona. He changed his name to “Ted” and got more involved in sports.

“Midway through junior high school, I decided that I’d had enough of being the unpopular nerd,” Cruz writes in his memoir, A Time For Truth.

By the time he reached high school at Second Baptist School in Houston, Cruz was performing in plays, making the honor roll, playing varsity soccer and basketball and leading the speech team. His senior year yearbook mentions or quotes Cruz 11 times.

“Some kids just stand out over the years,” said Gary Moore, a senior pastor at the school. . “He was one of them.”

But Cruz was also dabbling in trouble. In his book, he describes sneaking out of a friend’s house one night during sophomore year and being beaten up by older kids, and, in another incident, getting caught after decorating a rival school with toilet paper and shaving cream.

His senior yearbook alludes to an incident where one of Cruz’s eyebrows may have been shaven off during a trip to Mardi Gras in New Orleans with friends. “It seems a mad eyebrow shaver had escaped, and poor Ted was his untimely victim,” the entry reads. “Hope it grows back soon!”

While in high school, Cruz joined the Free Enterprise Education Center (today known as the Free Enterprise Institute), a non-profit conservative educational institute which became a formative endeavor for Cruz. Cruz competed in speech competitions at the center, winning most of them, and gave speeches on U.S. Constitutional principles to Rotary and Kiwanis clubs across Texas, said Winston Elliott, the institute’s president and an advisor to the group during Cruz’s time there.

As part of the exercises, Cruz, along with other students, used acronym memorization techniques to memorize sections of the Constitution. Unlike other students, who participated mainly to win class credit or scholarship money, Cruz relished and believed in the speeches he gave, Elliott said.

“When Ted talks about being upset about this is unconstitutional or that’s unconstitutional or spending needs to be cut, he’s only been saying that for 30 years,” Elliott said. “At some point, you have to think he’s probably not just saying this for political reasons. This is actually what he believes.”

He added: “Can he fire up the rhetoric, too? Yes. That’s part of politics.”

At a rally last week organized by a Houston-area Tea Party group, Cruz did just that. In a 40-minute speech to an auditorium packed with fervent supporters, Cruz promised to repeal Obamacare and undo the Iran nuclear deal if elected president, promised to abolish the Internal Revenue Service and dispatch its agents to defend the U.S. border with Mexico, and urged the release of Kim Davis, the Kentucky clerk jailed for refusing to issue marriage licenses to gay couples, who was released on Tuesday.

Cruz earned 13 standing ovations and repeated chants of “CRUUUUUUZ!” throughout the speech.

“He knows what liberty and freedom are all about,” said Char Close, 60, who drove 60 miles to see the candidate. “He’s also Texan. Texans do things a little differently.”

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