GOP candidate from New Jersey accused of pandering after he transforms into cowboy for Texas run

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Politics

GOP candidate from New Jersey accused of pandering after he transforms into cowboy for Texas run

By Meryl Kornfield
March 28, 2021 at 5:46 p.m. EDT

New Jersey boy. Pro wrestler. Failed Republican candidate in Nevada. Dan Rodimer has led many lives, but his latest — a cowboy hat-wearing, Southern-drawling bull rider — might be the most extreme transformation to date.

In his first ad as a candidate for Texas’s 6th Congressional District, “Big Dan” Rodimer speaks in a gravelly, indistinct Southern accent, throws jabs at Democratic policies and compares House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to a bull. The bull he’s supposedly riding in the ad.

But the New Jersey native didn’t have the twang last year when he ran for Congress in Nevada. In one of those ads, resurfaced by the American Independent, Rodimer’s voice was softer and more clear as he defended himself against assault allegations raised by his opponent. Rather than a rodeo arena, he was surrounded at home by his children and wife — who, at one point in the campaign, was forced to explain the 911 calls she had made against him.

Rodimer has remade himself again on a road he hopes will lead to Congress, though his latest persona has earned him ridicule, even from fellow Republicans.

{snip}

Meryl Kornfield
Meryl Kornfield is a staff writer on the general assignment desk of The Washington Post. Follow https://twitter.com/merylkornfield

[ananda]

1. Not Ted Cruz?

Maybe his clone.

[marble falls]

2. No clone. He's a bigger ass than Cruz ever was. Big Dan even changed his voice for this run.

[ananda]

5. And Cruz didn't? He's from Canada.

...

[marble falls]

6. You think Cruz butched up for the Senate? He's been here in Texas since '74 (4 years old)...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Cruz


Cruz's father was born and raised in Cuba, the son of a Canary Islander who immigrated to Cuba as child.[12] As a teenager in the 1950s, he was beaten by agents of Fulgencio Batista for opposing the Batista regime.[13] He left Cuba in 1957 to attend the University of Texas at Austin and obtained political asylum in the United States after his four-year student visa expired.[14] He earned Canadian citizenship in 1973[4] and became a naturalized United States citizen in 2005.[8][15][16]

At the time of his birth, Ted Cruz's parents had lived in Calgary for three years and were working in the oil business as owners of a seismic-data processing firm for oil drilling.[8][17][18][19][20] Cruz has said that he is the son of "two mathematicians/computer programmers."[21] In 1974, Cruz's father left the family and moved to Texas.[22] Later that year, Cruz's parents reconciled and relocated the family to Houston.[4] They divorced in 1997.[23] Cruz has two older half-sisters, Miriam Ceferina Cruz and Roxana Lourdes Cruz, from his father's first marriage. Miriam died in 2011.[23][24][25]

Cruz began going by Ted at age 13.[26]
Education

Cruz attended two private high schools: Faith West Academy, near Katy, Texas;[27] and Second Baptist High School in Houston, from which he graduated as valedictorian in 1988.[15][28][29] During high school, Cruz participated in a Houston-based group known at the time as the Free Market Education Foundation, a program that taught high school students the philosophies of economists such as Milton Friedman and Frédéric Bastiat.[20][30]

Cruz graduated cum laude from Princeton University in 1992 with a Bachelor of Arts in public policy[31] from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.[2][32] While at Princeton, he competed for the American Whig-Cliosophic Society's Debate Panel and won the top speaker award at both the 1992 U.S. National Debating Championship and the 1992 North American Debating Championship.[33] In 1992, he was named U.S. National Speaker of the Year and, with his debate partner David Panton, Team of the Year by the American Parliamentary Debate Association.[33] Cruz and Panton later represented Harvard Law School at the 1995 World Debating Championship, losing in the semifinals to a team from Australia.[34][35][36] Princeton's debate team named their annual novice championship after Cruz.[36] At Princeton, Cruz was a member of Colonial Club.[37]

Cruz's 115-page senior thesis at Princeton investigated the separation of powers; its title, Clipping the Wings of Angels: The History and Theory behind the Ninth and Tenth Amendments of the United States Constitution, was inspired by a passage attributed to James Madison: "If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary." Cruz argued that the drafters of the Constitution intended to protect their constituents' rights, and that the last two items in the Bill of Rights offer an explicit stop against an all-powerful state.[10][38]

After graduating from Princeton, Cruz attended Harvard Law School, graduating magna cum laude in 1995 with a Juris Doctor degree.[2][39] While at Harvard Law, he was a primary editor of the Harvard Law Review, an executive editor of the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, and a founding editor of the Harvard Latino Law Review.[32] Referring to Cruz's time as a student at Harvard Law, Professor Alan Dershowitz said: "Cruz was off-the-charts brilliant."[40][41][42][43] At Harvard Law, Cruz was a John M. Olin Fellow in Law and Economics.[44]

Cruz serves on the Board of Advisors of the Texas Review of Law and Politics.[45]



Please note I am not defending Cruz. He's smart enough to know better in his politics, but he is not a carpetbagger. He looks like the pile of dirty clothes he's always looked like. And Beto will knock him down another three years.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

3. Didn't notice this before. Cameraman is really good at not filming the rider's face for some reason.

Didn’t notice this before but the cameramen is really good at not filming the rider’s face for some reason.

Link to tweet

[Midnight Writer]

4. It worked for W.