To No Avail: Left tries it's damnedest to link Ted Cruz to liberal candidate Orman

10/13/2014
No evidence links political opponents Cruz ’92, Orman ’91 during time at U.

                                                              photo source: business insider

When U.S. Senator from Texas Ted Cruz ’92 set out on a bus tour last week, kickstarting the campaign for incumbent U.S. Senator from Kansas Pat Roberts, he also set out on a small-scale political battle against Greg Orman ’91, a Senate hopeful with whom Cruz spent three years at the University as an undergraduate. Orman, a businessman and independent candidate, has been accused by the Roberts campaign of being a stealthy democratic candidate.

“I’m reminded of another candidate who ran in 2008 who ran on empty promises. He ran on hope and change, and he figured a whole bunch of folks would like the rhetoric,” Cruz said of Orman, according to political website The Hill. “Mr. Orman seems to be taking a page out of Barack Obama’s book.”

Orman’s campaign has not kept quiet.

“Inviting the architect of last year’s government shutdown to Kansas is yet another example of how Senator Roberts is an enthusiastic participant in a broken system,” Jim Jonas, Orman’s campaign manager, said, according to ABC News.

Although the two studied at the University with only a year difference, friends of Cruz and Orman interviewed for this article all said they did not know whether the two had met during their time at the University. Catherine Frazier, Cruz’s press secretary, confirmed in an email that Cruz did not know Orman when they were undergraduates.

“I know no connection between Ted and Greg Orman on campus,” said David Panton ’92, Cruz’s friend as an undergraduate. “That’s not to say that there was no connection, but I personally know of none.” Panton and Cruz worked closely together in student government and the Cliosophic Society, were named Team of the Year of the Princeton Debate Panel and were roommates at the University, and later at Harvard Law School.

Cruz and Orman did not respond to requests for comment.

Even though both studied and were involved in activities conducive to eventual political careers, they were never members of the same club or organization. It seems as though Cruz and Orman never crossed paths at all as undergraduates.

Cruz was a member of Colonial Club and Butler College, while Orman had no eating club affiliation and was in Wilson College.

Cruz, a concentrator in the Wilson School, was president of the Ivy Council, chairman of the Princeton University Council, chair of the Cliosophic Society, executive director of education for the Debate Panel and director of training for the American Parliamentary Debate Association in his time at the University, according to his yearbook entry.

Orman was a member of Model Congress, Financial Forum, the Princeton Post and College Republicans, according to his yearbook entry. He majored in economics.

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