Tag Archives: Harvard Law School

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Ted Cruz’s roommate at Princeton: Craig Mazin or David Panton?

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David Panton and Ted Cruz do Princeton and Harvard conservative-style
David Panton and Ted Cruz do Princeton and Harvard conservative-style

My Dad asked me last night why Ted Cruz’s roommate doesn’t like him, and I couldn’t understand who he was talking about, because I know that Cruz’s roommate at Princeton and Harvard is a big success and a great friend of Ted Cruz.

A little research resolved the issue. Ted Cruz had a liberal artist / comedian roommate from Brooklyn, NY in his first year at Princeton, and then a black conservative roommate from Jamaica as a roommate for his remaining years at Princeton and then again at Harvard Law School.

Here is an article in the Jamaica Observer about the second roommate from 2015.

It says:

AS Jamaica welcomes US President Barack Obama on his first visit to the island, former Jamaica Labour Party senator David Panton is backing Republican candidate Ted Cruz to become the next American president.

Republican senator Cruz became the first US politician to announce his candidacy for the American presidency recently. Widely viewed as an ultra-conservative, he has the full support of his close friend, Panton — now chairman of his own PCH holdings, an investment company based in Atlanta, Georgia.

Outside of politics, Obama, Cruz and Panton all share at least one thing in common — they worked for the prestigious and influential Harvard Law Review. Obama was the first black president of that institution, while Panton was the second, and Cruz was a primary editor.

“I support Ted’s candidacy not only because of our close friendship, but because I believe he has the bold, consistent, principled leadership that America needs. He is also the most brilliant person I know,” Panton told the Jamaica Observer.

Politically, Panton has donated more than US$150,000 to Cruz in various capacities — when he was running for the Senate, and to support his bid for the presidency.

Panton, a former Rhodes Scholar and the first head of Generation 2000 (G2K), the group of young professionals affiliated with the JLP, believes that much of what the media has reported about Cruz is wrong.

Cruz and Panton started their friendship decades ago, when they were roommates first at Princeton University in New Jersey (for four years) and then at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts (for one year).

The two were also debate partners, and were named the number one team for the American Parliamentary Debate Association, with Cruz declared the number one speaker and Panton number two.

At Princeton, both were involved in student politics. Panton first entered student politics at Belair School in Mandeville where he won election as president of the student council. He built upon that victory at Princeton, by winning election as the president of the Undergraduate Student Government. Meanwhile, Cruz was chairman of the Council of the Princeton University Community (CPUC), where we worked closely on undergraduate student affairs.

Cruz was also elected president of the Cliosophic Society, a conservative political organisation at Princeton, and appointed Panton as his whip (deputy). Both worked closely on conservative politics on campus.

As President Obama gets ready for his first visit, Cruz has visited Jamaica on several occasions — including as the guest speaker for a G2K event, where former Prime Minister Edward Seaga was present, and also spoke.

Cruz also attended the wedding of Panton to current minister of youth, Lisa Hanna. Cruz is godfather to their son, Alexander, and he came to Jamaica to attend the christening. Panton was Cruz’s best man at his wedding to Heidi Cruz.

Cruz has also invested in Jamaica, and was a partner in the firm that Panton, Nigel Clarke, and Jeffrey Hall formed to invest in the Caribbean.

“I speak with, and see Ted frequently as a close friend, but deliberately do not discuss his campaign strategy,” Panton told the Business Observer.

“As an active supporter of a SuperPac that supports him, I am not able to discuss campaign strategy with him.

“Unlike the media portrayal of him as a firebrand, Ted is one of the kindest and most caring people I know. He cares deeply about other people and making a difference in their lives, as he did in mine, as a loyal friend, strong supporter, and committed mentor.

“When I was elected as president of the Harvard Law Review, my first call was not to my parents or family members, but to Ted, who at the time was clerking for Judge Michael Luttig, prior to his clerkship on the Supreme Court, as the first Hispanic clerk to Chief Justice William Rehnquist,” Panton said.

Although the first out of the blocks, Cruz currently has an approval rating of only about two per cent among the presumed Republican candidates. But that in itself may not overly concern him, as when Cruz ran for senator in Texas, he was also at two per cent in the polls — and joked that the margin of error was three per cent.

Cruz ran against the establishment, his opponent being David Dewhurst — the multi-millionaire incumbent lieutenant governor of Texas, who was endorsed by the governor, Rick Perry, and most of the Republican establishment in Texas.

But, like Obama, Cruz ran a grassroots campaign that focused on the base, and, even though he was heavily outspent, he defeated Dewhurst in a run-off by 14 points and won the general election by 26 points.

During that election he received about 40 per cent of the Latino vote on the same ballot where Latinos gave then-candidate Mitt Romney 27 per cent of their vote.

“I believe that — like when the voters of Texas got to know Ted, the person, not the caricature — the American people will also eventually recognise that as a Hispanic with a Cuban father who fled oppression, and as a principled, experienced, eloquent advocate for the Constitution, he has the background, skills, and abilities to be an outstanding president of the United States,” Panton said.

So, who is the roommate we should care about? The Hollywood liberal who tweets vulgarities at a third-grade level against a sitting U.S. senator and candidate for President? Or should we care more about the close friendship of the black conservative from Jamaica, who has a stellar education and career in areas that actually matter.

Hollywood is a clown industry. People dress up in costumes, and recite make-believe in order to entertain. We should not care what a little liberal perverted clown from Hollywood thinks of Ted Cruz. But we should care about what a black conservative immigrant who achieved great success thinks of Ted Cruz.

News

Erika Harold: Harvard law graduate and former Miss America runs for Congress

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Republican candidate Erika Harold
Republican candidate Erika Harold

The Weekly Standard reports.

Excerpt:

The most interesting House primary of the 2014 cycle began in June in the 13th District of Illinois. It pits freshman Republican congressman Rodney Davis against an insurgent candidate named Erika Harold. Davis is a political operative who won his seat last year nearly by accident. Erika Harold is a 33-year-old lawyer. Who happens to have been Miss America.

[…]In addition to the charisma and poise native to good politicians, Harold has exhibited the principled toughness of the best pols. And again, to appreciate this aspect of her character, you need only go back to Miss America.

Her platform as a Miss America candidate included abstinence:

Harold competed three times for the Miss Illinois crown, which she finally won in 2003. Each time, she ran on a platform of abstinence. But one of the arcane traditions of Miss America is that while contestants choose their own platforms when competing for the state crown, it’s the state organization that decides what platform the winner will take to Atlantic City. The year Harold was named Miss Illinois, her state committee settled on a bland platform opposing “youth violence.” (Think of it as “world peace,” for the children.) Harold agreed to oppose youth violence.

After she was named Miss America, however, Harold decided to add abstinence to her platform for the year of her reign. She didn’t abandon “youth violence” but rather included it, along with abstinence, in a broad appeal to kids to respect themselves by standing up to bullies and avoiding sex, drugs, and alcohol. This was, as a matter of both intellectual coherence and moral sense, a significant improvement on the pure “youth violence” platform she’d been handed. The Miss America organization did not like it one bit.

The organization pushed back hard and told Harold to keep quiet—especially about sex. The disagreement made national headlines and culminated in a news conference at the National Press Club in Washington, where the newly crowned Harold told reporters, “I will not be bullied. I’ve gone through enough adversity in my life to stand up for what I believe in.” Miss America stared down the pageant and won.

Promotes fiscal conservativism to African Americans:

Harold was already interested in politics. During a Miss America appearance at East St. Louis High School, students asked her what she wanted to be when she grew up. She told them, “My ultimate goal is that I want to be the first black female president of the United States.” While still an undergraduate at Illinois, she volunteered for conservative Patrick O’Malley’s doomed 2002 Illinois gubernatorial campaign. She also volunteered with the Republican National Committee in an effort to promote conservative economic principles in African-American communities. After graduating from law school, she joined a Chicago firm where her practice has specialized in health care law and religious freedom.

[…][W]hile Harold tries to resist easy classification, her ideological markers are highly suggestive of a conservative worldview. There’s the abstinence, of course. She’s fiercely pro-life. She favors concealed-carry gun laws. And she’s on the board of Prison Fellowship Ministries, the program founded by Chuck Colson.

Focused on religious liberty:

The most interesting part of Harold’s legal practice has been her work defending faith-based entities. In one case, for example, she represented a retirement community affiliated with a religious group. The organization featured a cross on its logo and used a Bible verse in its mission statement—which attracted a lawsuit from an advocacy group contending that this amounted to discrimination. Describing this work, Harold says, “It’s a passion of mine.”

Looking across the broader national landscape, Harold sees ample reason to be concerned about religious freedom. “We’re starting to see ways in which our constitutional protections are being encroached upon,” she says. “We all are less free when any group isn’t afforded their constitutional protections.”

And not just less free, but less well off. Harold says that her time with Prison Fellowship Ministries has deepened her appreciation for the good religious organizations can do. “I’ve seen firsthand the need for there to be a space in public life for religious groups to be able to offer service to their fellow man,” she says. When government seeks to quarantine religious organizations, moving from freedom of religion to “freedom of worship” (to use the formulation President Obama favors), “it’s far too limiting in terms of the good they can do for the public, and it’s far too restrictive in terms of the protections which are afforded religious groups by the Constitution. We give something up when we say that certain voices aren’t welcome in the public square.”

Harold says she intends to make religious freedom an issue in her campaign. This is fitting at a time when the HHS mandate, the Hobby Lobby case, and the torrent of litigation about to be unleashed by the Supreme Court’s gay marriage decisions appear likely to make religious freedom a central front in the culture war.

We have such a deep bench, so there’s reason for optimism – if you’re a Republican like me! Here’s another story I found about another young, female Republican candidate Elise Stefanik. I would not be annoyed at all if all of our candidates were women or minorities or minority women. I wouldn’t even be annoyed if our candidates were some sort of dolphin-alligator hybrid monstrosities, (although I prefer pretty lawyers ladies). The main thing I want is that our candidates are conservative. That’s what really matters to me.