Cruz looks to regroup after split with Trump
Following high-profile snub of mogul, Texan now stands to reap possible dividends
WASHINGTON — The night before Ted Cruz’s fateful speech at the Republican National Convention in July, a group of insiders and prominent “VIP” supporters gathered in Cleveland for a final celebration of his then-defunct presidential bid.
Among them was Deborah Kelting, a Houston insurance broker and longtime conservative activist with a tea party group called True The Vote. She made one last plea to Cruz campaign manager Jeff Roe.
“I just said, ‘Please, please tell me that Ted Cruz is not going to endorse Donald Trump,’” she recalled.
Cruz’s decision to withhold his endorsement did not go over well inside the Quicken Loans Arena, where a once-receptive crowd intent on party unity turned against the junior U.S. senator from Texas and booed him as he left the stage.
But where Cruz once looked prepared to pay the price — he was denied entry to the suite of megaGOP donor Sheldon Adelson moments later — he now stands almost entirely alone as a highprofile Republican nervy enough
to publicly snub Trump before the embattled celebrity businessman began running into turbulence in the polls.
Banished from the GOP presidential campaign — Trump told him publicly to stay home and “relax” — the political dividends for Cruz remain uncertain as he seeks to rebuild his political organization for a 2018 re-election campaign and possibly another run for the White House in 2020.
While top Republican leaders and Trump campaign insiders fret about a string of campaign missteps, including a damaging feud with the Muslim family of a fallen U.S. soldier, Cruz, 45, appears to have regrouped with core supporters in Texas who never were reconciled to Trump’s nomination.
“If Ted Cruz had endorsed Donald Trump, he would have lost his movement,” Kelting said. “And that movement is not necessarily just Ted Cruz’s movement, it’s about corruption in both parties, and the movement sees that Donald Trump is just the flip side of the same coin.”
Ironically for Cruz, much will depend on Trump’s fortunes against Hillary Clinton, who has opened up sizable margins against the Republican nominee, both nationally and in key battleground states.
“It’s the ‘Big Short,’” said Austin-based GOP consultant Jordan Berry, who has worked with Cruz. “He’s shorting the Donald Trump real estate empire.”
Relegated to the sidelines, Cruz has been tending to his national grass-roots fundraising operation and traveling the Lone Star State, starting with a meeting Monday with aerospace industry leaders in Houston and a stop at the Johnson Space Center.
He also launched his official Senate campaign Snapchat account Monday. A fundraising pitch to supporters — including 326,000 campaign volunteers and the nearly 600 delegates he won on the strength of 8 million votes — raised the specter of a 2018 challenge from former state Sen. Wendy Davis or U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro.
No Republican primary challenger has emerged publicly, though some names have been whispered since Cruz’s combative encounter with Texas’ national GOP delegates the morning after his speech in Cleveland.
‘Regrettable and revealing’
No matter what happens to Trump, few analysts think Cruz is vulnerable in Texas, in part because he still was sitting on a $6.3 million war chest at the end of June, according to federal campaign reports.
Cruz may have suffered more lasting damage outside Texas. New York billionaire Robert Mercer, one of Cruz’s biggest financial backers, issued a stinging rebuke to the Texas Republican after his convention speech, charging that he not only had reneged on his pledge to support the eventual GOP nominee, but was shirking his duty to keep “all hands on deck” for a Trump victory.
“Unfortunately,” the normally reclusive Mercer said in a lengthy statement to the New York Times, “Senator Cruz has chosen to remain in his bunk below, a decision both regrettable and revealing.”
That could be a damaging narrative for Cruz, who presumably would need to maintain a national network of major donors to mount a future White House bid. He has been courting those donors in at least one post-convention conference call.
Insiders close to the Texan’s camp see little chance of a turnaround, especially given the continued animosity between Trump and Cruz. Trump has gone so far as to say he would raise money to campaign against Cruz in the future. Neither is known for backing down. Cruz, though he was once involved in an early strategic partnership with Trump, has built his brand on not buckling under to political expediency.
Those who recall the acrimony between Cruz and Trump in the waning weeks of the primary season hardly are surprised that Cruz has chosen to distance himself from the real estate mogul’s campaign. Trump’s mocking tweet of Cruz’s wife’s appearance, followed by his suggestion that Cruz’s father may have been tied to the John F. Kennedy assassination, remains for some Cruz supporters the only excuse he needs.
Vindication possible
Though feelings remain raw, analysts say that what counts is what people will remember in two or four years. If Trump goes down in flames in November, Cruz could be vindicated in his argument that his GOP primary rival was neither conservative nor electable. A Trump triumph — or a close loss — could change the dynamics.
“Four years from now, nobody’s going to remember that Trump was not nice to Cruz, his father and his wife,” said University of Houston political scientist Brandon Rottinghaus. “Nobody’s going to remember that stuff. All they’re going to remember is, he was the skunk at the garden party.”
The alternative narrative that Cruz has promoted was that he stood steadfast to conservative principle, whatever the consequences. He has gotten some support for that interpretation both in and out of Republican circles.
Conservative blogger and radio host Erick Erickson wrote after the convention speech that Cruz “will be remembered fondly by history for standing up for conviction and principle and defying (Trump).”
That view is shared by some operatives far outside of the Cruz orbit. “I think it’s one of the smartest moves he’s ever made, and he’s made some smart political moves in his career,” said Javier Palomarez, president of the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, which has taken the unprecedented step of endorsing Clinton against Trump.
More damaging to Cruz may be the way he sought to thread the needle by going to the Republican convention, congratulating Trump, and then talking generally about conservative values without endorsing the party’s nominee.
Other prominent Republicans who have split with Trump — notably Jeb Bush, Mitt Romney and John Kasich — simply chose not to go to Cleveland. Critics say that suggests Cruz was seeking confrontation, a trait that has made him personally unpopular in Washington, and could continue to cause him problems in the Senate, where he has feuded with his own party leaders.
“There were a lot of people who didn’t agree with Trump who just chose not to speak, while Ted Cruz sought the spotlight,” said Edward Espinoza, executive director of Progress Texas, a pro-Democratic group. “He chose to make it about him and cause a lot of consternation in Republican ranks. He’s going to have to deal with that.”
“If Ted Cruz had endorsed Donald Trump, he would have lost his movement. And that movement is not necessarily just Ted Cruz’s movement, it’s about corruption in both parties ...”
Deborah Kelting, tea party activist