As Senate race heats up, Ted Cruz pitches himself as the better bipartisan

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WASHINGTON — Heading into the heat of his reelection race against Dallas Congressman Colin Allred, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz is testing the waters with a rebrand.

Cruz, who has made a name for himself as an uncompromising conservative stalwart, is casting himself as a bipartisan lawmaker with a penchant for reaching across the aisle.

“I actually have very good relationships with many of my colleagues across the aisle,” Cruz told The Texas Tribune, citing his work with Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand, Cory Booker and Amy Klobuchar. “I've worked with all three of them and all three are friends.”

The interview was part of Cruz’s recent media blitz highlighting his work with Democrats, off the heels of his “Democrats for Cruz” announcement which aims to attract left-leaning voters this November. He debuted that messaging during a Laredo meeting with the U.S. Hispanic Business Council, where he stressed the value of bipartisanship legislating and enumerated several bills he’s written with Democratic senators. Meanwhile, Cruz is blasting Allred as not as bipartisan as he claims, citing the Democrat’s voting record with his party’s leadership.

“It is easy and probably more fun to cover the battles that I have waged against the Obama administration or the Biden administration, or [Senate Majority Leader] Chuck Schumer,” Cruz said. “Those may make for easy headlines, but often overlooked are now 99 different pieces of legislation that I've authored and passed into law in my time in the Senate.”

The rhetorical shift comes as polls show another tight race for Cruz. A February poll by the University of Texas at Tyler showed the two candidates equally polling at 41%. Another poll conducted in March by Marist College found Cruz ahead by six percentage points.

His critics say he’s trying to rewrite history, noting that Cruz has built a persona that demonizes Democrats. In his podcast, countless radio and television appearances, and his books, Cruz routinely blasts the other party as actively working to destroy the country.

Cruz consistently votes against some of the biggest bipartisan bills in Congress and is routinely ranked as one of the most conservative members in the Senate. He was ranked 91 out of 98 senators in 2021 in the Lugar Center’s bipartisan index by Georgetown University (Two senators weren’t included in the ranking because they hadn’t served for at least six months). Texas’ senior Sen. John Cornyn was ranked 8th.

“I don’t think Ted Cruz is fooling anybody,” Allred said. “He spent 12 years being the most divisive — and proudly so — partisan warrior in the United States. And I think it’s kind of laughable actually that at this point, when he’s in a close race, that he wants to now stress, 'Oh, actually I have been working in a bipartisan way.'”

Democrats for Cruz

Cruz has a lot of work cut out for him undoing his reputation as an enemy of the left. The senator launched himself to national fame by being one of the most antagonistic conservatives in Congress. In his first year in office, he led a 21-hour filibuster against former President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act, then orchestrated a two-week federal shutdown to strip funding from the law. He was one of the senators who led a challenge to the 2020 election results ahead of the Jan. 6 insurrection, and Cruz says he will continue to back former President Donald Trump fully if he is elected president again.

Cruz doesn’t deny that he’s a cultural warrior and has often worn the personal dislike he invokes among Democrats with pride. He remains one of the most popular elected officials among conservative leaning voters in Texas. Cruz regularly calls President Joe Biden corrupt and supports House efforts to impeach him. Cruz endorses candidates who are hardline conservatives and do not care to compromise with Democrats. And he does not shy from attacking his Democratic colleagues.

"When I first arrived in the Senate 12 years ago, there was such a thing as moderate Democrats. They existed. You could work them," Cruz said at the Texas Public Policy Foundation's Texas Policy Summit last month. "There aren't any left. The Democrats, they hate Trump so much their brains have melted, and what's happened is they have gone crazy off the edge to the left."

But Cruz asserts that for all the ire, he still gets things done. He ranked the 16th most effective Republican senator during the 2021-2022 session of Congress by the Center for Effective Lawmaking at the University of Virginia and Vanderbilt University.

“Campaigns are always about two things: the record of each candidate and the vision of the candidate for the state,” Cruz said. “And in terms of my record, I've spent 12 years fighting for the people of Texas and delivering major victories for the state of Texas over and over again.”

To prove the point, Cruz launched a group of “Democrats for Cruz” last month to highlight his work on Texas-specific issues that may not grab the national headlines. The group includes Democrats across the state, including local elected officials, law enforcement, business owners and industry advocates, who back Cruz in his reelection campaign. Cruz’s campaign says the group continues to grow.

“I know a different Ted Cruz. The Ted Cruz that never, never gets mentioned in our national media. The Ted Cruz that collaborated with me in trying to reform H1B high tech visas,” said Javier Palomarez, president and CEO of the United States Hispanic Business Council, during a Laredo event with Cruz. “Now we don’t always get along, and we don’t always agree, pobrecito, but I’m working with you.”

Palomarez, a lifelong Democrat who is part of Cruz’ coalition, formerly led the United States Hispanic Chamber of Commerce until 2018, when he stepped down over allegations of financial misconduct and sexual harassment. Palomarez later told The New York Times that his ouster was retaliation over his willingness to work with the Trump administration.

Other members of the group include former Laredo Mayor Pete Saenz, a conservative Democrat.

No members of Congress were highlighted in the video launching Democrats for Cruz. And no Democratic senators cited by Cruz as friends or collaborators agreed to speak for this story.

Democratic senators have similarly cited their ability to work with Cruz in their own campaigns. U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Georgia, released an ad in 2022 joking that he and Cruz worked “surprisingly well together” after the two collaborated to extend Interstate 14 from the Permian Basin to Georgia’s Atlantic Coast.

The corridor was passed unanimously in the Senate before being added to the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. Cruz voted against the IIJA, which was one of Biden’s cornerstone legislative priorities.

“We do a lot more together than people know,” Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Virginia, said in a Fox News interview. “Cooperation isn’t sexy. So when we do stuff together, it’s not likely to get the attention as when we have disagreements.”

Kaine and Cruz are working together on legislation to track xylazine, commonly known as “tranq,” as it is smuggled into the country. The senators serve together on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Kaine is also up for reelection this year.

During the Laredo event, Cruz again highlighted working with Gillibrand on legislation to do away with a policy at service academies requiring pregnant cadets to either withdraw or give up their child. The bill was signed into law.

Cruz also worked with U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Laredo, to streamline the permitting process for bridges used to cross the Texas-Mexico border to encourage international trade. In his first term in Congress, he passed a law that would deny admission to U.N. representatives who had engaged in espionage.

“He did a great job and we were able to pass it together,” Cuellar said of Cruz’s work on the international bridge legislation. “I’m willing to work with anybody that’s willing to do bipartisan work.”

When asked if he felt Cruz was a bipartisan lawmaker, Cuellar emphasized: “I’m saying just in this case, it was bipartisan.”

But Cruz has also voted against nearly every major bill pushed by Biden, including bipartisan bills that garnered the support of other Texas Republicans. He opposed the CHIPS and Science Act and the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act — both major bills that Cornyn worked on. The bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which he voted against, ended up investing billions into Texas roads and bridges.

Cruz said he supported and worked on parts of the CHIPS and Science Act and the IIJA, but voted against the bills because he had misgivings about the final forms of the massive packages. The CHIPS and Science Act would include billions in federal payments to semiconductor manufacturers, which Cruz said amounted to corporate welfare. Cruz said on the Senate floor at the time that the IIJA had far too high a price tag.

When bipartisan Senate negotiators unveiled a border plan that would put harder caps on the number of migrants admitted into the country, Cruz panned the deal as not going far enough and advocated instead for a hardline House-passed Republican border package. The deal died among Senate Republicans after Trump blasted it publicly.

“This is what members of Congress do,” said Dan Diller, policy director of the Lugar Center. Diller was formerly a legislative director for the late Republican Sen. Richard Lugar. “They go through a primary promising all the most extreme things that appeal to their party's base. Then they get into a general election, and they pull out a few samples of bipartisanship and talk about them.”

Countering Allred

As he rehabs his own reputation, Cruz is also taking aim at Allred who has run on a ticket of moderation and bipartisanship since he first flipped his House seat in 2018. Beating Republican U.S. Rep. Pete Sessions that year in what was then a competitive district, Allred focused heavily on his endorsements from both organized labor and Dallas’ business community. He was endorsed by both the AFL-CIO union and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Allred has since been ranked the most bipartisan member of the Texas congressional delegation by the Common Ground Committee, a nonprofit organization dedicated to combating divisiveness in politics. All but one of the 43 bills he’s cosponsored that got passed into law was with Republican buy-in — and all but one were when Democrats had the majority. Of the bills he has introduced, about a third of them have buy-in from Republicans. He worked with Rep. Jake Ellzey, R-Midlothian, to bring federal funds for veterans health care to North Texas — a bill that was eventually signed into law.

The Lugar Center ranked Allred 119th out of 435 members in its bipartisanship index. The Lugar Center’s metrics do not include messaging bills such as those renaming a post office and bases its rankings on bills members have sponsored and cosponsored with members of the opposite party.

Bipartisanship remains a central element to his campaign message as he takes on Cruz, whom he casts as more occupied with being a conservative celebrity than a serious legislator.

“I do want to find a way to actually get things done. And in my experience, the best way to do that, and to make sure that's effective and can last is to be bipartisan,” Allred said in a recent interview. “That's what we're looking for, somebody who will actually try and bridge some of these divides and actually deliver instead of just pulling off political stunts that don't help anybody.”

Allred beat the more progressive state Sen. Roland Gutierrez of San Antonio in the Democratic primary. His openness to work with Republicans and at times buck his own party to do so led to criticisms from Gutierrez of “handholding with Republicans.”

Gutierrez took particular issue with Allred’s support for a nonbinding Republican resolution condemning the Biden administration’s handling of the southern border. Allred defended his vote as expressing dissatisfaction with the status quo of migration policy.

Still, Allred is a loyal Democratic voter on major legislation, voting 100% in line with then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi during the four years Democrats were in the majority. Cruz claims voting so closely with Democratic leadership is antithetical to being a truly bipartisan lawmaker.

“He's fond of describing himself as bipartisan, by which he means that he votes for bills that most or all the Democrats are voting for and some Republicans are voting for,” Cruz said. “It's a little bit like someone who arrives at the parade and waves in the parade and then claims credit for the parade.”

But the criticism goes both ways. Cruz has voted 92% in line with Trump’s positions, including 100% aligning himself with the former president’s agenda after Trump left office, according to a FiveThirtyEight analysis.

There have been instances where Cruz’s conservative fighter ethos has staved off would-be partners. U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a progressive New York Democrat, spurned Cruz’s invitation to collaborate on securities trading legislation after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

“I am happy to work with Republicans on this issue where there’s common ground, but you almost had me murdered 3 weeks ago so you can sit this one out,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote on social media at the time.

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