Cuban-American Raul Mas Canosa tells
Newsmax TV he's proud that it's looking like there will be two Cuban-Americans running for president in 2016.
Texas
Sen. Ted Cruz was the first candidate to officially announce that he plans to run for president in 2016 in a speech he gave Monday at Liberty University in Virginia. His father was born in Cuba.
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Florida
Sen. Marco Rubio, who is also expected to run for president, is the child of two Cuban immigrants.
"I'm extremely proud of the fact that these are both Cuban-Americans like myself," Canosa, who is an activist in the Latino community and contributor to Fox News Latino, told J.D. Hayworth and Miranda Khan on "America's Forum" on Monday.
"As Cuban-Americans, we have a disproportionate representation in the halls of Congress," he explained.
"We've got two Republican Cuban-Americans that are running, and both of them very conservative individuals," he added.
Canosa, who also works as a senior healthcare executive at United HomeCare, said that Cruz gave "a fantastic speech" Monday.
"This is a gentleman who absolutely believes in his convictions apart from the fact that he's a terrific speaker and was able to fire up the crowd by touching on all the hot-button conservative issues," he explained.
Canosa predicts that Cruz will "do exceptionally well, much more so than people give him credit for."
Conservative commentator John Fund, who joined Canosa on Newsmax TV, said that "Ted Cruz is certainly going to set down the marker as the conservative firebrand, the one who's going to fire up the crowds."
"His grassroots tea party backing will certainly put him in contention," he said.
"He announced today in part because he wants to raise money from the grass roots to have a good showing for the March 31 financial statement that the Federal Election Commission will be publishing," he explained.
"This is his rallying point to get the grass roots excited, get them ginned up and give him a head start on some of the other candidates, that's why he went first," he added.
According to Fund, Cruz isn't merely a social conservative, but a candidate that can appeal to a broad conservative base.
"He views the conservative movement as a stool with three legs," he explained. "There's economic conservatives, there's national security conservatives and there's social conservatives.
"He says none of the other candidates really address all three of those [legs]," he said.
"He plans to be strongest on every single one of those three stool legs, and I don't think he's appealing to any one group over another," he added.
According to Canosa, "we're going to have a big battle in the Republican Party, [but] it's a battle worth having."
"We've got some terrific candidates, and the debates and the discussions are going to be very good for the country."
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