"I'm running for president, and I hope to earn your support!" Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, tweeted shortly after midnight, hours before his expected official declaration Monday at the Rev. Jerry Falwell's Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia,
The Washington Post reported.
The style of the decision is part of the "disruptive app" he told the Conservative Political Action Conference last month that he wanted to bring to politics,
according to Time.
Unlike traditional presidential candidacy announcements, this one is being made early, not on his home turf, and without first setting up an exploratory committee. Cruz is "betting that his best shot to win is breaking the old rules," Time reported.
The firebrand Texan aims to build a coalition that pulls together tea party loyalists, social conservatives, and foreign-policy hawks, according to Time.
"He has the broadest appeal of all the conservative candidates, appealing to Iowa's evangelicals, tea partiers, and liberty faction without changing anything about who he is," said Iowa talk radio host Steve Deace. "He's arguably the best soldier the conservative cause has had in recent memory," Time reported.
Announcing at Falwell's institution — the evangelical pastor and Moral Majority founder
died in 2007 — will help set the tone for Cruz's campaign. He is trying to pull ahead of the pack, which includes former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, as well as Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker — all popular in conservative Christian circles, according to Time.
He also gets a jump on all the other contenders who will wait until April to announce, so that they will not have to report their fundraising activities until mid-July, Time reported.
Cruz's nonconformist approach will also be seen in his plan to fund this stage of the presidential campaign with small donations.
"There were two campaigns on which we modeled our campaign for Senate, and they were Obama's campaign for president in 2008 and Marco Rubio's campaign for Senate in 2010," Cruz told Time in 2013.
He gifted his staff copies of "The Audacity to Win: The Inside Story and Lessons of Barack Obama's Historic Victory" by David Plouffe, Obama's former campaign manager, according to the magazine.
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