He made the comment when asked to respond to former Governor Mike Huckabee (R., Ark.), a potential 2016 rival who said that primary voters need to pick a candidate with executive experience.

“If not me, I would be supportive of someone who has had executive experience and who has been a governor prior to somebody having only had legislative experience, which I think is fundamentally different in the manner in which one serves,” Huckabeetold reporters on Monday.

Cruz said he was focused on the wrong thing. “The test that should be applied is not whether someone is a governor or a senator or a candlestick maker, the test that should be applied is who is standing up and leading?” Cruz said. “We are facing enormous challenges. I think the stakes in this country have never been higher and it is my hope in 2016 that Republicans will nominate whoever is standing up and leading, whoever is making the case that the path that we’re on is not working, that the Obama economic agenda is a disaster that is hurting millions of Americans, that the Obama-Clinton foreign policy has produced wreckage on a global scale, and there is a better path.”