Ted Cruz's report card

Ted Cruz, the former Texas solicitor general seeking the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate seat being relinquished by Kay Bailey Hutchison, has made a few checkable claims since launching his bid.

In our latest Cruz fact-check, we rated Pants on Fire his claim that Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, who’s also seeking the Senate nomination, has a record of promoting an income tax.

In March 2006, Dewhurst said he’d prefer that an overhaul of the state’s business franchise tax be tied to whether a business had profits or not -- and he backed off that a day later. We spotted no other indicator that Dewhurst has a record of promoting a state income tax.

Our previous checks of Cruz:

--We rated Pants on Fire his statement that President Barack Obama "began his presidency going on worldwide apology tour." Obama’s speeches in other countries after his election contained criticisms of past U.S. actions, but not one full-throated apology.

--Cruz said Dewhurst’s campaign accused him of being a Red Chinese Communist. That’s Mostly True; the subject line of one Dewhurst email can be taken as referring to Cruz as a Chinese Communist; another cited email similarly depicts Cruz as siding with China over the United States, but doesn’t include the "red" label.

--Cruz said Dewhurst skipped nine candidate forums after announcing his candidacy. It was correct that Dewhurst did not appear at nine forums, eight of them after the night he announced his candidacy. But it’s a mite questionable to say he outright skipped the events. In most cases, his campaign said beforehand Dewhurst wasn’t going to appear. Mostly True.

See Cruz’s report card here.