Republican Ted Cruz's Tuesday election win made history on two fronts.
First, as Fox News Latino reports, with his election win against Democratic challenger Paul Sadler, Cruz became the first Latino senator to represent Texas in the U.S. Senate. Cruz will be replacing retiring Republican Kay Baily Hutchison in the senate seat.
Cruz will be joining fellow Latino US Senators Bob Menendez, D-New Jersey, and rising GOP star Marco Rubio, R-Florida, on Capitol Hill.
This also marks the largest amount of Latinos in the U.S. Senate-three.
All in all, there have been seven Hispanic U.S. Senators that have worked in Washington since Octaviano Ambrosio Larrazolo became the first Latino to be elected to the senate. Larrazolo served as the U.S. Senator from New Mexico in 1928.
Cruz will push the total number of Latino senators up to eight.
A virtual unknown prior to the start of the Senate race in Texas, Cruz rose to prominence after he took a serious, angry tone that earned him the backing of the Tea Party. In that tone, he pledged to take on Washington and cut down on federal spending.
If Obama "means what he says on the campaign trail, if he is interested in working to bring people together to reduce the deficit and get people working, then I will work with him," Cruz said Tuesday in a victory speech, according to Fox News Latino. "But if he is re-elected and intends on continuing down this same path, then I will spend every waking moment to lead the fight to stop it."
Video of Cruz's speech can be seen here, via his campaign's YouTube page:
Those statements come on the heels of warnings from economic experts that the U.S. is heading for a fiscal cliff in 2013, which can only be avoided if partisan gridlock in Washington ceases and both Democrats and Republicans work together.
After the election, President Obama and Republican Speaker of the House of Representative John Boehner made statements indicating that both sides might be willing to come together to solve the country's economic woes.