Here’s 'the great irony' of Ted Cruz’s reelection bid: report

23 October 2024

Longtime US Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) is struggling to stay ahead of his opponent, former NFL player and Democratic Senate candidate, Colin Allred. A new Emerson College Polling/The Hill survey showed that the Texas lawmaker is ahead of Allred now by just one point.

Cruz's campaign slogan "Keep Texas, Texas," reflects the GOP senator's priority of "securing the Texas-Mexico border," according to Austin, Texas' KVUE News. "Everyone that wants to turn Texas into California, look at this room and realize you cannot have the great state of Texas!" Cruz when he kicked off a campaign tour in August.

In a Wednesday, October 23 Mother Jones article, national correspondent Tim Murphy explains the "irony" of Cruz's slogan.

Noting that "at the end of every event on Ted Cruz’s 53-stop campaign swing through Texas, the state’s junior senator invites supporters to line up and sign his bus," Murphy emphasizes, "one simple message written in gold marker on the door captured the essence of his path to victory: 'CA Refugee 4 Ted!!'"

The Mother Jones correspondent submits, "This is the great irony of the embattled Republican’s reelection bid: For a party that complains about Democrats 'importing' voters from across the border, it is Texas Republicans who are relying on migration to remain in power. The people he is seeking to protect Texas from, according to the data, are Texas-born residents (who backed his 2018 opponent, Beto O’Rourke)."

Furthermore, Murphy writes, "The people he is hoping will save him are, in no small part, transplants. The result is that the politics that Cruz pitches on the campaign trail is less about addressing the lived reality of Texas—a high-tax and low-services state with poor public health outcomes and a fragile power grid—than about preserving the image it projects to the world. It is a contest, in a sense, between Texas and Texas™."

Murphy's full article is available at this link. KVUE's report is here.

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