Ted Cruz holds up confirmation of ag nominee to help oil refiners

WASHINGTON—Ted Cruz is holding up the confirmation of a key agriculture nominee to help oil refiners in his home state of Texas—infuriating some of the Iowans who fueled his rise in the 2016 presidential primary.

Cruz is up for re-election this year in Texas, where oil and gas is king and employs hundreds of thousand of people. But he could someday take another run at the White House, and Iowa is traditionally the site of the nation’s first presidential caucuses.

Roughly 315,000 Texans work in the state’s oil and gas industry. Cruz and other free market conservatives say it’s suffering from rising fees connected to renewable fuel standards.

In an effort to force industry players to discuss reconsidering that fee, Cruz last week once again withheld his support to confirm Bill Northey, President Donald Trump’s nominee for a top U.S. Department of Agriculture position.

Cruz says a meeting over the fees is critical to his state, where more than 100,000 jobs are tied directly to refining.

But using Northey as leverage to get it has fueled outrage from key Iowa Republicans, including GOP heavyweight Jeff King, who helped Cruz’s presidential Super PAC and once called the senator the “answer to my prayers.”

Northey, Iowa’s secretary of agriculture, was nominated by Trump in October to serve as the USDA’s undersecretary for farm production and conservation.

King, the son of Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, defended Northey as “one of the best I know.” Despite being charmed by the Texas Republican on a 2015 hunting trip, he went on to suggest “there aren’t many Cruz supporters left,” in Iowa.

In Texas, Cruz critics on the left and right have attacked him for putting personal ambitions ahead of serving his home state. After winning the Senate nomination in an upset primary victory in 2012, Cruz easily won the general election and launched a presidential bid three years later.

On Wednesday, Cruz insisted he wasn’t pitting one state against another in an “instance of parochial differences.” But, in a public speech, he was talking like a Texan.

“I am elected, like each of the members of the body, to represent my constituents, in this case 28 million Texans,” said Cruz. “Seeing hundreds of thousands of blue-collar workers driven out of business because of a broken regulator system makes no sense.”

Texas’s senior Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, isn’t weighing in on Northey’s confirmation battle.

He said through an aide Friday he’ll “continue working hard to unify all stakeholders in a consensus effort to reform the Renewable Fuel Standard.”