Ted Cruz is not the first Latino to run for president.
Remember back in 2008 when New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson was a candidate for the Democratic Party’s nomination? He dropped out of the race after the New Hampshire primary.
Cruz isn’t even the first Latino Republican to run for president.
Before Richardson, Benjamin Fernandez — a California millionaire and son of Mexican migrant farmworkers — ran in the Republican presidential primary of 1980. He even got enough votes to send three delegates to the Republican convention that year. He ran again in 1984, dropping out after the New Hampshire primary.
It seems that New Hampshire, historically, is the crucible of Latino presidential hopes, and early polling of Republican primary voters in that state isn’t favorable to Cruz — at the moment only about 4 percent say they would support the 44-year-old Texas senator and Tea Party darling.
It isn’t really surprising. And Cruz is as polarizing a figure among Latinos as he is in the GOP.

This is how Lalo Alcaraz, the political cartoonist and the writer/producer of Fox’s Bordertown, tweeted about him:

I think Ted Cruz was voted off Latino Island long ago

— Lalo Alcaraz (@laloalcaraz) March 25, 2015

If you're an immigrant &you can't keep yourself from being anti-immigrant or saying hateful things about immigrants...you're off the island!

— Lalo Alcaraz (@laloalcaraz) March 25, 2015

Immigration is certainly one of the ways Cruz diverges from the vast majority of Latinos in the nation. Nine out of 10 Latinos (89 percent) support President Obama’s executive action on immigration relief while Cruz has championed efforts in Congress to dismantle it. And while he has spoken glowingly about the work ethic that drives immigrants to attain the American Dream, he has also talked about barring undocumented immigrants from ever being eligible for citizenship; about changing immigration priorities to favor business demand over family ties; and has advocated vastly increased spending on the border patrol and border drones.

Like Alcaraz, many Latinos question Cruz’s authenticity as a Latino. “Although Ted Cruz has a Latino name and immigration in his past, there the similarities between the Latino community and him end,” Cesar Vargas of the Dream Action Coalition told Fox News Latino.
But nothing to do with the large and diverse Latino votership is ever quite so simple.
In 2012, Latinos supported Barack Obama over Mitt Romney by a margin of 71 percent to 27 percent, according to Pew. But Resurgent Republic (a public opinion research group founded by a former RNC chairman and a GOP pollster) calculated in 2010 that while 51 percent of Latinos were Democrats, 18 percent were Republican, and 31 percent were Independents, 54 percent of Latinos, regardless of party affiliation, identified themselves as conservative.
Religion continues to play an important part of Latino identity, and often puts Latinos more in line with both the Republican and Tea Party positions than the Democratic.  Fifty-five percent of Latinos are Catholic, and 16 percent are Evangelical Protestants — 54 percent of those Latino Catholics and 70 percent of those Latino Evangelicals believe abortion should be illegal, and 21 percent of the Catholics and 30 percent of the Evangelicals identify as Republican. In terms of same-sex marriage, 66 percent of Latino Evangelical Protestants oppose it (as do 31 percent of Latino Catholics).
In places like Texas (where 44 percent of the Latino voters helped re-elect Republican governor Greg Abbott in 2014), Nevada (where 47 percent of the Latinos voted for Republican governor Brian Sandoval in 2014), and Florida (where 45 percent of Latinos voted for Republican governor Rick Scott in 2014), Cruz’s uncompromising conservatism certainly has a chance to garner him votes from Latinos.
In Florida, we heard personal accounts of how Cuban-Americans were celebrating that Rafael “Ted” Cruz, son of a Cuban immigrant, was the first entry into what will likely be a field crowded with presidential hopefuls, even possibly a number of Latino hopefuls (Sen. Marco Rubio, another Republican and son of Cuban immigrants, has been mentioned, as have both Julian and Joaquin Castro, Democrats, Mexican-Americans, and the secretary of HUD and Texas Representative, respectively).
It is an interesting exercise to contrast Cruz’s chances to those of Rubio and the Castro twins. Latinos analyzing the political landscape have long held that a Cuban-American candidate would have a hard time winning over Mexican-American voters (52 percent of the Latino voters are Mexican-American), but turn out rates certainly make it more possible than people are willing to believe. According to Pew,  among Latinos by country of origin group, Cubans had the highest voter turn out rate with 67.2 percent. “Cubans were followed by Hispanics of Central or South American origin (57.1 percent), other Spanish origin (53.7 percent) and Puerto Rican origin (52.8 percent). Hispanics of Mexican origin had the lowest turnout rate — 42.2 percent.”
Latino candidates gain quite a lot by being fluent in Spanish, particularly with older voters and those who are resolutely Spanish-dominant natural or naturalized citizens. Of the Latinos who have been mentioned as possible contenders for the 2016 run, only Rubio wins on this account since the Castro brothers can’t speak Spanish at all, and Cruz admits he speaks Spanglish.
But, like Nevada’s governor Brian Sandoval, Cruz may prove to be just Latino enough to draw Latino conservatives and conservative-leaning independents, and not so Latino that he causes a disconnect with the Anglo conservative.
Lionel Sosa, chief advisor for several presidential campaigns including those of Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush, told AL DÍA in December 2014, that “the way to get the Latino vote is to want the Latino vote. Good candidates have certain qualities ... (they are) able to understand their constituency. Who is for me? And who might be for me. And then, who isn’t going to be for me. You don’t talk to the people who aren’t going to be for you. You do talk to the people that you know are going to be with you, but mostly you talk to the people that could go either way. Get them to know you, get them to like you, get them to trust you ... It is an emotional bond that is built, because the people who are the swing vote are going to make that decision emotionally, not just on the issues.”
If that ends up being the case, Cruz may have a much better chance at the Republican nomination than anyone gives him the credit for having at the moment. And then ... we’ll have to start considering whether he has a chance at the real first: a Latino president.
Whether you are a Democrat or a Republican, fasten your seatbelt. Cruz missile or mission, it is going to be a bumpy (and riveting) ride.