Flying back in face of outrage
After Cancún ‘firestorm,’ Cruz returns to icy reception in Texas
WASHINGTON — U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz was feeling the heat in Cancún, but it wasn’t the 80degree weather.
What he later called a “firestorm” of criticism was building online after pictures surfaced showing the Texas Republican boarding a plane out of Houston on Wednesday while millions in his home state were left in the cold, without power and water, reeling from a major disaster.
The Cancún trip, which drove the national news cycle Thursday, was “obviously a mistake,” Cruz said in a rare mea culpa after returning home to Houston after just one night — cutting short a trip that was originally scheduled to last through the weekend.
Cruz said he was “taking care” of his family and caved as his daughters asked him to get away from their freezing home, which was without power like much of Houston. But Cruz
said he regretted it as soon as he got on the plane.
By Thursday morning, the trip had already sparked renewed calls for Cruz’s resignation — six weeks into 2021, the senator with 2024 presidential ambitions has also been the focus of scorn over his objections to certifying President Joe Biden’s electoral victory, an effort his campaign used to raise money that also led to calls for
his resignation and an ethics complaint from Senate Democrats.
“In hindsight I wouldn’t have done it,” Cruz told reporters gathered outside his home. “I needed to be here and that’s why I came back, and as it became a bigger and bigger firestorm it became even more compelling that I needed to come back.”
It was the second time this week Cruz publicly acknowledged he was wrong. He did the same after he was called out for having mocked California’s rolling blackouts in 2020.
“I got no defense,” Cruz tweeted in response. “A blizzard strikes Texas & our state shuts down. Not good. Stay safe!”
Political experts in Texas, however, don’t expect all this bad PR to stick. Even after the insurrection at the Capitol, Cruz consistently ranks among the most popular Republicans in the state. He was second only to Donald Trump in a University of Houston poll released last month, easily weathering the outrage from the Capitol attack.
“While he may be one of the most disliked politicians in Texas, he is also one of the most wellliked — and his base is not going to budge, even under these circumstances,” said Renée Cross, senior director at UH’s Hobby School of Public Affairs, which conducted the poll.
Republican political operatives, however, were shaking their heads at the Cancún trip, even as they questioned what Cruz realistically could have done about the crisis in Texas that he couldn’t also do remotely.
Derek Ryan, a Republican political consultant in Texas, predicted the photos will haunt the senator for some time.
“Whether he can help or not, in 2024 the ads will be, ‘While you and your family froze, Cruz fled to Mexico,’” Ryan tweeted. “Perception is reality.”
“You need to be seen as engaged, you need to be seen as active in your community, helping out,” said Brendan Steinhauser, a GOP strategist in Texas.
“He is a senator, so what can he actually do right now? Most of what they can do is make calls, send emails, make statements. … He could argue a lot of those things, I can do from my phone, from virtually anywhere,” Steinhauser said. “But he decided to come back home. … He sees this is a perception problem.”
Cruz said he had planned to work from Cancún and that it “certainly was not my intention for that to be understood, as critics have tried to paint it, as somehow diminishing the hardship other Texans have experienced.”
He said his family spent two days without power “and my girls wanted to take a trip with their friends and frankly get somewhere where it was warmer.”
“We were trying to be good parents and said, ‘OK, we’ll do it,’” Cruz said.
“At a time when so many Texans are hurting and frustrated and mad, that this has become an item of debate and distraction, I think that's unfortunate,” Cruz. “That was certainly not my intention. My intention was to take care of my family.”
Meanwhile, text messages Cruz’s wife, Heidi, sent to a group of friends, which were leaked to the New York Times, were going viral online Thursday night. Heidi Cruz complained their house was “FREEZING” and invited friends for a getaway at the Ritz-Carlton, where she said the Cruzes had stayed before and where rooms were going for $309 a night .
Democrats, likely already writing their 2024 attack lines, were again calling for Cruz’s resignation Thursday.
“Ted Cruz jetting off to Mexico while Texans remain dying in the cold isn’t surprising, but it is deeply disturbing and disappointing,” Texas Democratic Party Chair Gilberto Hinojosa said in a statement titled “For the 21st Time, Texas Democrats Call on Ted Cruz to Resign or Be Expelled From Office.”
“Cruz is emblematic of what the Texas Republican Party and its leaders have become: weak, corrupt, inept and self-serving politicians who don’t give a damn about the people they were elected to represent,” Hinojosa said. “They were elected by the people but have no interest or intent of doing their jobs.”
Elected officials in some of Texas’ biggest cities also pounced.
“Guess which US Senator from Texas flew to Cancun while the state was freezing to death and having to boil water?” tweeted state Rep. Gene Wu, a Houston Democrat.
“In crises like these, members of Congress play a critical role connecting their constituents to emergency services and assistance,” former San Antonio Mayor Julián Castro tweeted, adding Cruz “should be on the phone with federal agencies, not on a trip to Mexico.”
U.S. Rep. Sylvia Garcia, a Houston Democrat, brought up Cruz’s trip in an unrelated interview and said she’s in a couple of group text threads that “have just been going crazy with that.” Garcia joked that she had been thinking this week that “real Texans can get through it all,” before seeing the news about Cruz’s trip to Cancún and thinking, “Oh, that’s right,” Cruz is from Canada.
“I just think it’s incredible insensitivity,” Garcia said.
But the most potent attacks against Cruz may not come from Democrats, predicted Steinhauser, the GOP strategist. He noted that Cruz and Gov. Greg Abbott are considered possible presidential candidates in 2024 and would both be competing for Texas support in the primary.
“It’s more likely to come up there than anywhere else,” Steinhauser said.
In front of Cruz’s home in River Oaks, about a dozen protesters chanted calls for his resignation while several Houston police officers stood close by. One officer appeared to measure the noise level of the crowd as they shouted “hey hey, ho ho, Ted Cruz has got to go.”
Camille Chenevert said she has been calling for Cruz’s resignation since he raised claims of election fraud last year.
“But leaving us to freeze for four days while he’s in Cancún, it’s unacceptable,” said Chenevert, a Montrose resident. “My apartment was 37 degrees this week. My pipes burst, and if you’re going to represent us … you’ve got to represent us while we’re in trouble and we’re in crisis.”
Gina Biekman agreed, contending that Cruz did not appear sincere when he announced his return to Texas.
“I got angry, because it seems like he just left and didn’t try to do anything to make the situation better,” she said. “And then when he was caught leaving he was like ‘Oh I’m coming back to fix this problem.’”
Cruz isn’t the first Texas politician to stir up scandal by hopping on a flight to Mexico during a disaster. Austin Mayor Steven Adler drew scorn for vacationing in Cabo San Lucas in November as he urged Austin residents to stay home amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Cruz was among those to pile onto Adler, tweeting: “Hypocrites. Complete and utter hypocrites. And don’t forget @MayorAdler who took a private jet with eight people to Cabo and WHILE IN CABO recorded a video telling Austinites to “stay home if you can … this is not the time to relax.”
Like Adler in the pandemic before him, Cruz had also warned Texans against traveling during the winter storm.
“If you can stay home, don’t go out on the roads, don’t risk the ice,” Cruz said in a radio interview Feb. 16. “Don’t risk it, keep your family safe and just stay home and hug your kids.”