Cruz, Dewhurst Debate In Dallas
Texas Republican U.S. Senate candidates David Dewhurst and Ted Cruz covered several issues as they sparred Tuesday night in Dallas, just two weeks before their July 31st runoff election. While the two tended to agree on most of the major issues, they immediately staked out their different backgrounds. Cruz said he was proud of the fact that he has never been elected to public office and touted his experience as Texas Solicitor General. "It's easy to talk about defending religious liberty," he told the moderator. "I'm honored to have defended the Ten Commandments and the Pledge of Allegiance and to have won before the U.S. Supreme Court." Dewhurst countered that his experience as a private businessman and for the past eight years as Lt. Governor is more valuable. "You've made your legal record the cornerstone of your campaign," he told Cruz. "But you contrast that with someone like myself who has started a business, had his neck on the chopping block."
One of the key exchanges of the night was over the issue of illegal immigration and securing the Texas border, specifically the controversy over a 2007 speech by Dewhurst in which he supported a guest worker program for illegals. Dewhurst clarified the remarks, proclaiming "I, then and now, would never support any changes to our immigration law until and unless our border is secure....that's the first thing we have to do." But Cruz said he drew a far different conclusion from the Dewhurst speech. "What the Lieutenant Governor said in 2007 is that he believes we should give a guest worker program to every single person who's here illegally...that's a much broader amnesty than Barack Obama's."
The other heated moment came when Dewhurst repeated criticism from his ads that Cruz once represented a Chinese company that was successfully sued by an American business over intellectual property rights. Cruz countered by asking how much of Dewhurst's personal wealth is currently invested in China. Dewhurst said he wasn't sure but that all of his investment information is publicly available.
