Cruz’s candidacy is good news — for Democrats

(PHOTO: DANIEL SANGJIB/AP)

U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz’s announcement that he is running for the Republican presidential nomination is great news for Democrats: He will push the other Republican hopefuls to the right on immigration, further scaring away Hispanic voters and making it more difficult for Republicans to win next year’s elections.

The Canadian-born son of a Cuban father and a U.S.-born mother, Cruz — a first-term Republican senator from Texas — is one of the most rabid critics of President Obama’s executive action to regularize the legal status of up to 5 million undocumented immigrants, most of them Hispanic.

Cruz has called on Congress to defund Obama’s measures to give temporary legal status to undocumented immigrants who pay taxes and meet other conditions, and has supported greater local police powers to ask people who are detained on the street about their immigration status.

Not surprisingly, a recent Latino Decisions poll found that, despite Cruz’s Hispanic heritage, he has little support among Latinos. The poll of Latino support for several Republican hopefuls, including Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, Chris Christie, Rand Paul and Cruz, found that Cruz and Paul were the least liked among Hispanic voters.

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