Cruz wins re-election in Texas
Democrats hoped to grab state Senate seat for the first time since 1988
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, won reelection Tuesday in one of the tightest midterm races in the country, defeating the best-financed and most popular Democrat to run in Texas in years, Rep. Beto O’Rourke.
Cruz’s victory, reported by The Associated Press, did more than dash Democratic hopes the party could capture a Senate seat in Texas for the first time since 1988. It promised to restore Cruz’s standing as a farright force in American politics, after many leaders in his own party questioned whether he was likable enough to run successfully against a candidate like O’Rourke, an El Paso congressman known for his charisma.
Cruz will return to Washington having conquered a Democratic rising star and thwarted a high-profile push to turn one of the reddest states in America at least a faint shade of purple.
Texas voters also elected the state’s Republican governor, Greg Abbott, to a second term.
For months on the campaign trail, Cruz was more often on the ropes than not, a surprising position for a top Republican incumbent in a state where Democrats hold no statewide offices.
Cruz’s fundraising fell far short of his opponent’s — he raised somewhat more than $40 million, compared with more than $70 million raised by O’Rourke — and he sometimes found himself eclipsed on other fronts as well.
O’Rourke attracted bigger crowds at some rallies than Cruz did, including more than 50,000 people who attended a free concert for O’Rourke in Austin starring country music legend Willie Nelson. Even Cruz’s rival event — the rally President Donald Trump attended in Houston that drew up to 19,000 — reinforced the belief among his critics that Republicans were worried.
Party officials acknowledged that the Cruz campaign had un- derestimated the threat posed by O’Rourke early in the race and that it was slow to gather steam.
Against that backdrop, Cruz turned up his rhetoric, casting O’Rourke as a pro-tax liberal who was anti-police, who favored unauthorized immigrants over American citizens and who was “running to the left of Bernie Sanders.”
Cruz joked that his opponent was heading to Mexico to lead the caravan of Central Amer- ican migrants making their way to the border. He said O’Rourke wanted to plunge the country into chaos by impeaching the president, and claimed that his opponent was against guns, the oil-and-gas industry, border security, Israel, low taxes, drug laws, the Department of Homeland Security and standing for the national anthem.
O’Rourke largely refused, with a few exceptions, to go on the attack against Cruz in response, a policy that Republican and Democratic strategists considered a key mistake. And they said O’Rourke failed to spend enough time and money drawing a contrast between himself and his opponent; he never made a persuasive closing argument to voters about why they should fire Cruz.
“I think Beto has done far too much messaging that has excited his national donor base, rather than his Texas voter base,” said Ted Delisi, a Republican political consultant in Austin who was chief campaign strategist for Sen. John Cornyn in 2002.
“You have to pull somebody away on issues,” Delisi said, speaking as if he were addressing O’Rourke. “You have gotten as far as you can get on personality and, sure, you are more likable than Ted Cruz. Willie Nelson loves you. The concert was fun. But now what?”
Throughout the campaign, Cruz repeatedly had to explain his relationship with Trump. After Cruz’s bid for the Republican presidential nomination failed in 2016, the senator declined at first to support Trump, but later eagerly embraced him, even though Trump had mocked and demeaned Cruz’s wife and father.