Penny Sue Pritzker (born 1959) is an American business executive, and a member of the Pritzker family of Chicago, one of America's wealthiest business families. She is the founder and current Chair of Classic Residence by Hyatt, or Vi, a chain of luxury senior living communities spread throughout the United States, and the national finance chair of Barack Obama's presidential campaign. In 2011 the Forbes 400 list of "America's wealthiest" showed her as the 263rd richest person in the U.S., estimated net worth of US $1.7 billion. Also in 2011 Forbes listed her as the world's 651st richest person.

On November 20, 2008, CNN reported that Pritzker was Barack Obama's top choice for Commerce Secretary, quoting "multiple" unnamed sources. However, it was later reported that because of her involvement in the failure of subprime lender Superior Bank, Pritzker took herself out of the running.

Born in 1959, Pritzker is a member of the Pritzker family, a notable and influential Jewish American business family. Pritzker is a daughter of Sue (Sandel) and Donald N. Pritzker (1932–1972), co-founder of the Hyatt hotel chain, which grew dramatically under his leadership as President from 1959 until his death in 1972. She attended Castilleja School until 1977. She earned a BA in Economics from Harvard College (1981), and a JD/MBA from Stanford University (1984).

Eric S. "Rick" Perlstein (born 1969) is an American historian and journalist. He is a former writer for The Village Voice and The New Republic, and writes a regular column for Rolling Stone.

Pearlstein graduated from the University of Chicago with a B.A. in History in 1992, and did graduate work in American Studies at the University of Michigan. Until 2009 he was a Senior Fellow at the Campaign for America's Future where he wrote for their blog about the failures of conservative governance, The Big Con.

Perlstein also wrote Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus (2001) and Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America (2008).

Rafael Edward Cruz, known as Ted Cruz (born December 22, 1970), is the former Solicitor General of the U.S. state of Texas, a position which he held from 2003 to May 2008. Cruz was appointed by Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott. He was the first Hispanic Solicitor General in Texas, the youngest Solicitor General in the United States, and had the longest tenure in the post thus far in Texas history. He is currently a partner at the law firm Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, where he leads the firm’s U.S. Supreme Court and national appellate litigation practice.

Cruz is a candidate for the 2012 Republican nomination for the United States Senate seat being vacated by Kay Bailey Hutchison.

Cruz previously served as 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 as Domestic Policy Advisor to U.S. President George W. Bush on the 2000 Bush-Cheney campaign. In addition, from 2004-2009 Cruz was an Adjunct Professor of Law at the University of Texas School of Law in Austin, where he taught U.S. Supreme Court litigation.