Ted Cruz Texas senator

Age: 44

Religion: Southern Baptist

Base: Tea partiers

Résumé: US senator, former Texas solicitor general, former US Supreme Court clerk, former associate deputy attorney general under President George W. Bush

Education: B.A. Princeton University. J.D. Harvard Law School.

Family: Married to Heidi Nelson Cruz (2001), with two young daughters. His father is a preacher and he has two half-sisters.

Claim to fame: Cruz spoke on the Senate floor for 21 hours in September 2013 to protest the inclusion of funding for Obamacare in a federal budget bill.