English: New England College will host a Town Hall Meeting for Republican presidential candidate Senator Ted Cruz, Wednesday, February 3, 2016, at 10:00 AM, in the Simon Center Great Room, located on NEC’s Henniker campus. Cruz’s Town Hall Meeting is the thirteenth in a series of NEC Town Hall Meetings featuring announced presidential candidates, leading up to New Hampshire’s First in the Nation Presidential Primary (#FITN).

HENNIKER, N.H. — Ted Cruz is feeling the Bern. Sort of.

At a town-hall-style event in New Hampshire on Wednesday, the Texas senator identified Bernie Sanders as an unlikely kindred spirit while describing the failings of Washington.

“Actually in diagnosing the problem, I agree in many ways with Bernie Sanders,” Mr. Cruz said. “Media folks, they’re very puzzled when they say, ‘Gosh, Ted, you sound exactly like Bernie saying it is all big money and lobbyists and corruption.’ Well, you know what? That’s right, it is. Washington is corrupt.”

Mr. Cruz repeated a familiar campaign refrain: that the country’s greatest political divide is not between Republicans and Democrats but between “career politicians” from both parties and the people they represent.

Eventually, Mr. Cruz did get around to the caveat: He and Mr. Sanders, whose platform includes myriad tax hikes and tuition-free college, disagree on virtually every policy remedy.

“His solution is, ‘So we need even more Washington, we need the government to take over even more of the economy and our lives,’” Mr. Cruz said. “I think that solution is nuts.”

Mr. Sanders has long been a target of gentle ridicule from Mr. Cruz on the stump, though his most pointed vitriol is almost always reserved for President Obama and Hillary Clinton.

After his victory in the Iowa caucuses victory on Monday, Mr. Cruz allowed himself a peek at the vote tallies across the aisle.

“The Democrats here seem to be in a virtual tie between one candidate who admits he’s a socialist and the other candidate who pretends she’s not,” Mr. Cruz said to laughs. “I wish them both luck.”

Rafael Edward "Ted" Cruz (born December 22, 1970) is an American politician and the junior U.S. Senator from Texas. He is a Republican candidate for President of the United States in the 2016 presidential election.

Cruz attended elementary and high school in and around Houston, graduated from Princeton University in 1992, and then from Harvard Law School in 1995. Between 1999 and 2003, Cruz was the director of the Office of Policy Planning at the Federal Trade Commission, an associate deputy attorney general at the United States Department of Justice, and domestic policy advisor to President George W. Bush on the 2000 George W. Bush presidential campaign. He served as Solicitor General of Texas from 2003 to 2008, appointed by Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott. He was the first Hispanic, and the longest-serving solicitor general in Texas history. Cruz was also an adjunct professor of law from 2004 to 2009 at the University of Texas School of Law in Austin, where he taught U.S. Supreme Court litigation.

Cruz ran for the Senate seat vacated by fellow Republican Kay Bailey Hutchison, and in July 2012 defeated Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst during the Republican primary runoff, 57%–43%. Cruz then defeated former state Representative Paul Sadler in the November 2012 general election, winning 56%–41%. He is the first Hispanic American to serve as a U.S. senator representing Texas, and is one of three Senators of Cuban descent. Cruz chairs the United States Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Oversight, Federal Rights and Agency Activities, and is also the chairman of the United States Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Space, Science and Competitiveness. In November 2012, he was appointed vice-chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

Cruz began campaigning for the Republican presidential nomination in March 2015. During the primary campaign, his base of support has been mainly among social conservatives, though he has had crossover appeal to other factions within his party. His victory in the February 1, 2016 Iowa caucuses marked the first time a Hispanic won a presidential caucus.