Don’t mess with a Texas dad. U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz may be learning the hard way after his work (or lack thereof) to help free a Marine who was wrongfully detained in Russia in 2019.
Joey Reed promised to make sure Cruz would be voted out of office after his son Trevor, a Marine veteran from Granbury, was arrested in Russia in 2019 and detained for three years of a 9-year sentence — and his own Senator was either unable or unwilling to help, the Texas Tribune reports. Russians claimed Trevor assaulted a police officer during a trip to visit his Russian girlfriend. He and the U.S. government denied the charges at the time, but he was locked up all the same.
In a new ad released Thursday morning, Joey said he called Cruz in 2019 to get help freeing his son, “We were frantic. We tried to stay focused and not just break down every day crying. The first politician that we called was Ted Cruz. They basically said, ‘We’re not going to be able to help you.’”
With the door closed on them, Joey and his family turned to other Texas lawmakers. Among the people he worked with? U.S. Senate candidate and Cruz’s latest opponent: Colin Allred.
“Ted Cruz didn’t lift a finger for us when everybody else in the state did. Colin Allred was right there, working with both parties to bring our son home,” Joey Reed said in the new ad.
In a statement to the Dallas Morning News, Cruz’s campaign did not acknowledge the lack of action. “Senator Cruz was incredibly relieved for Trevor and his family when he was released from wrongful detention in Russia and safely returned home,” the statement said. “Senator Cruz has been a leader throughout his Senate career in fighting for the return of unjustly held Americans.”
The Reeds are the latest in a string of Texans who’ve said Cruz has been missing on the job during key moments, including when he fled to Cancun during the deadly 2021 Texas winter storm. “He’s an embarrassment to the state of Texas, let me just say that,” Joey Reed told the Dallas Morning News in 2022. “I don’t care what or who runs against him, I will work for their campaign to defeat that son of a bitch.”
Two years later, Reed’s been true to his word. Polling shows that Allred is closing in on Cruz, so there’s a small chance this Marine dad’s work to give him the boot may truly pay off.
