When Texas political leaders project images of themselves, it’s always the same. They’re in cowboy hats, boots, and toting a firearm.
It’s how we like to imagine ourselves: the rugged cowboy, squinting into the distance, masculinely thinking about something.
U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz is none of that.
Instead, Cruz is our political reality: a smarmy, insincere politician with no core values other than self-preservation. He’s a man who even his own party detests. A debate club nerd who made it.
And now we’re stuck with him for six more years. This is strange because he’s so fundamentally unlikable. Even traits that would be endearing on a normal human, like quoting “The Simpsons,” feel gross coming from him.
Former NFL linebacker and congressman Colin Allred ran a spirited campaign that succeeded in raising money and running seemingly-effective ads attacking Cruz. However, in the end, it didn’t matter in a state that saw former President Donald Trump sail to an easy victory, with Cruz riding on his coattails.
Some of the excitement about a potential Allred victory stemmed from his solid debate performance last month, which created a flurry of viral social media clips in which he rebuked Cruz for hiding in a “supply closet” during the attempted insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
Had he won, Allred would have been the third-ever Black politician elected to statewide office in Texas, and the first-ever Black senator to represent the state in Congress. “I stand on the shoulders of giants like her,” Allred said when he joined Opal Lee, the Grandmother of Juneteenth, on the campaign trail. Lee led the walk for freedom in establishing Juneteenth as a national holiday.
On the other hand, Cruz endorsed a man who called his wife ugly, and for some reason he still keeps winning elections. Even his fellow Republicans hate him. Sen. Lindsay Graham famously observed: “If you killed Ted Cruz on the floor of the Senate, and the trial was in the Senate, nobody would convict you.”
Among his many misdeeds, Cruz helped come up with the plot to overthrow the 2020 election, voted against certifying the election results from Arizona, voted against capping the cost of insulin, talked about raising the retirement age, called Social Security a Ponzi Scheme, and blamed that Cancun trip on his daughters. He also was so unhelpful in getting a Marine from Granbury back home from wrongful detainment in Russia that the man’s father later publicly endorsed Allred in a scorching political ad: “Ted Cruz didn’t lift a finger for us when everybody else in the state did.”
As for his legislative accomplishments, they are few and far between. During Obama’s tenure, Cruz authored a courthouse renaming bill, along with one that prevented the U.S. from giving visas to U.N. diplomats “that previously engaged in terrorist or espionage activities against the United States,” the Texas Tribune reported. While Trump was in office, Cruz served as chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Space, and he was responsible for a bill reauthorizing NASA. The senator also pushed for tax breaks for victims of Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria, which passed. That was good!
But that’s about the end of it.
When Texas froze and hundreds of people died, he fled to Cancun. It didn’t matter. Cruz is a weirdly slimy ball of Teflon. Nothing sticks to him, even if nobody wants to be around him either.
His voice sounds like he’s either lecturing a child or asking a customer service representative if they know who they’re talking to. He’s such a black hole of social graces that even the most homeschooled kid would want to give him a swirly.
He probably wore a tie to school in pre-K. He probably reminded the teacher they forgot to give a quiz and even the teacher was annoyed. He’s the friend who stabs you in the back and neither of you are surprised. He looks like the human embodiment of snitching. He could play Schadenfreude in “Inside Out 3.”
He’s not a charismatic politician or a good campaigner — but that doesn’t matter because he lives in a state where, if you’re running for office and have an “R” next to your name, you’re going to win.
The candidates spent a collective $160 million dollars, according to figures from the Texas Tribune. Allred outraised Cruz in every quarter since he announced his candidacy in June 2023, according to the Houston Chronicle. And then he used that money: Allred spent more than three times on ads than did Cruz, the Chronicle reported.
Allred would have been first Democrat to win a statewide race in Texas since 1994. He also received a helping hand just weeks before the election from Vice President Kamala Harris and Beyoncé during a rally in Houston attended by more than 30,000 people.
Anyway, we Texans are stuck with Ted Cruz for six more years because he does the most important thing a Republican can do in 2024: make liberals really mad. And right now, we can be sure of one thing — that he’s really proud of himself.
Correction: This story previously claimed that Allred would have been the first Black politician ever elected to statewide office in Texas. In fact, Texas has had two Black statewide elected officials: former state Supreme Court justices Wallace B. Jefferson and Dale Wainwright. The Barbed Wire regrets the error.
