BRUISED CRUZ
The press adores his opponent and is calling for blood. But don’t count the Texas senator out
The toughest opponent is the one you don’t see coming.
Sen. Ted Cruz is the political heavyweight champ in his home state of Texas. In 2012, his long-shot run that defeated then-Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst was nothing short of a miracle. His fame swelled when he famously filibustered for 21 hours on the Senate floor and championed a government shutdown over spending, moves that made him the conservative favorite in the 2016 presidential election.
Now Cruz is facing a new kind of challenger in Beto O’Rourke, who’s bolted out of the blue and throwing a different kind of punch.
In many ways, the rise of O’Rourke echoes that of Barack Obama in 2004.
Both men are charismatic, with interesting life stories. O’Rourke grew up in El Paso, played bass in the rock band Foss, went to Columbia University and returned home after a couple of years to co-found his own software company. The 45-year-old O’Rourke walks with a swagger, skateboards in restaurant parking lots, pulls all-nighters on the road, is up-front about youthful indiscretions and shoots iPhone videos that become 30-second ads — all making good copy for reporters and providing hope for Texan Democrats, who have been in the political desert here since 1994, the last time a Dem held statewide office.
In a recent phone interview, Cruz, 47, tells me that he gets Beto’s opening strike: buzz. “Every week we see fawning profiles in the media of my opponent that breathlessly describe him. The most frequent adjective used is Kennedy-esque,” he says of the lofty profiles O’Rourke has enjoyed.
O’Rourke’s campaign is fueled by celebrity and funded mostly by enthusiastic digital donors, while relying on a small, tight-knit group of young campaign workers who have pledged not to hire seasoned consultants.
But when it comes to the final stages of this fight, O’Rourke can’t duck the issues, Cruz says.
“Usually in Texas in a general election, Democrats at least pretend to go to the middle. Congressman O’Rourke is not doing that,” Cruz says. “He voted against the tax cut and he wants to raise taxes on Texans. He supports the Obama regulations that hammered the state of Texas in the oil and gas industries as well as farmers and ranchers. He wants to expand ObamaCare to full-on socialized medicine, putting the federal government in charge of health care and your doctors. He not only opposes a wall, but he supports sanctuary cities, and he has said he is open to abolishing ICE and the entire Department of Homeland Security. On gun control, he’s tweeted out how proud he is that he has an F rating from the NRA.
“And in 2014, he was one of only eight members of the House to vote against funding Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system while Hamas was raining rockets on Israel — something virtually every Republican and Democrat voted for.”
Despite Democrats pushing the idea that Texans are moving blue, the Dems in this state tend to be more conservative than Beto and they want to know how a candidate stands on issues. Cur- rently, RealClearPolitics puts Cruz over Beto by 4.5 percentage points in a match that is ranked “a toss-up,” but a new Quinnipiac poll shows Cruz surging by 9 percentage points. And for all the talk of a blue Texas, Republican Pete Flores last week won a state senate race in a Lone Star district Hillary Clinton took by 12 points, flipping the seat red for the first time in 139 years.
Cruz’s problem is mainly one of image. He is smart and lets his opponents know it. Unfortunately that can be offputting even to voters who share his goals and values.
Despite White House budget director Mick Mulvaney implying to GOP donors that Cruz could lose his reelection because of likability issues in an audio tape obtained by The Washing- ton Post, President Trump has pledged to visit Texas soon to rally for the senator. And Cruz can certainly be expected to throw plenty of policy punches at Beto in the upcoming debates.
There’s one more thing he has in his arsenal: relentlessness. “I’ll be spending the final weeks campaigning, barnstorming the state,” he says. “We’re going to big cities, small cities. We’re doing town halls all over the state. We’re seeing energy and enthusiasm. But this election will come down to turnout. The good news is there are a lot more conservatives than there are liberals in Texas.”
The question is, do conservatives show up? “If we show up, we’ll have a very good election in November.”