Is Cruz blunting Democrats’ hatred in reelection bid?
When he ran for reelection in 2018, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz sought to motivate his fellow Republicans to get to the polls by warning them that Democrats "will crawl over broken glass" to vote against him.
He wasn't wrong. Democrats that year absolutely hated Ted Cruz. They did indeed turn out in droves, broken glass or not, and they came within just a couple of percentage points of ousting the junior senator from Texas.
Six years later, the two-term incumbent opened his general election campaign with a social media post telling voters that Texas Democrats actually like the 2024 version of Ted Cruz.
But do they? The short answer: maybe a few here and there. Cruz's post features a video of a handful of Democrats talking up his approach to issues such as energy, law enforcement and border security. Among them are former Laredo Mayor Pete Saenz and Presidio County Sheriff Danny Dominguez.
The real question is, do Democrats still hate Cruz? Newly minted Democratic senatorial nominee U.S. Rep. Colin Allred had better hope they do. Allred, like U.S. Rep. Beto O'Rourke of El Paso six years ago, is giving up a safely Democratic seat in Congress to challenge Cruz.
And when he spoke to his supporters at his Tuesday night primary election victory party, Allred sought to rekindle many of the themes O'Rourke had sounded as he attempted to push Cruz's negatives to center stage, including the senator's polarizing approach to politics and his ambition for advancement.
By the time Cruz came up for reelection in 2018, he had sought to shut down the federal government in a failed gambit to defund the Affordable Care Act. He had run for the Republican presidential nomination and in the process called eventual 2016 nominee Donald Trump "a sniveling coward." And in a Senate floor speech Cruz had accused Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of telling "a flat-out lie" during legislating maneuvering.
Antipathy for Cruz during that time was so baked into the political cake that it wasn't just late-night comedians making jokes about it. Joining them were the Texas Republican's own peers in the notoriously genteel Senate chamber.
“I like Ted Cruz more than most of my other colleagues like Ted Cruz," deadpanned then-Sen. Al Franken, a Minnesota Democrat. "And I hate Ted Cruz.” It was a bipartisan sentiment.
"If you killed Ted Cruz on the floor of the Senate, and the trial was in the Senate, nobody would convict you,” joked Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.
Graham later walked the one-liner back, acknowledging that death might be too harsh a penalty for the crime of rubbing fellow senators the wrong way.
During his second term, however,
Cruz appears to have dialed back any desire to pick fights with Republicans in high places. Even though he has said he'd like to make another run for president someday, he opted out of running for the GOP nomination this cycle, preserving his post-2016 alliance with Trump.
His newfound outreach to Democrats notwithstanding, Cruz will probably not be named a poster child for bipartisanship anytime soon. He was a rock-solid "no" on recent legislation, which was ultimately doomed, to boost funding for border security, even as some Republicans sided with President Joe Biden and the congressional Democratic leadership.
He also voted against the law, negotiated by fellow Texas Republican Sen. John Cornyn, that expands background checks on gun buyers 21 and younger to include their mental health and juvenile justice records and closes the so-called "boyfriend loophole," which prevents people convicted of domestic abuse from legally owning a gun.
Allred, who easily topped a nine-candidate Democratic primary field to win the nomination outright Tuesday, has been reminding voters since he entered the race that during the deadly February 2021 winter storm, Cruz jetted off to the sunny beaches of Cancún in Mexico while millions of Texans shivered without power and heat for several days.
All of that probably gives Allred the foundation he'll need to keep his party's base in line in the run-up to the Nov. 5 general election. But will it be enough to re-create the loathing among Democrats and a fair share of independents that Cruz came to fear six years ago?
According to the latest poll by the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas, released in February, 17% of Democrats and 29% of independents have a very or somewhat favorable opinion of Cruz. Meanwhile, 70% of Democrats and 48% of independents have a very or somewhat unfavorable opinion of the senator.