Consider the case of GOP Sen. Ted Cruz, who took an ill-fated trip to Cancun, Mexico, three whole years ago and now can't live it down. That hardly seems fair. Lots of Texans travel to Mexican resort towns and, were it not for a few cheap souvenirs or maybe a case of chlamydia, don't return with anything memorable, or even memories. Tequila will do that to you.
Not Cruz, though. The poor soul spent just one night in Cancun way back in February 2021, and it continues to haunt him. It might even influence whether he gets to keep his job, according to Jessica Taylor, senior editor of The Cook Political Report, which recently changed its outlook on the Cruz's race against Democratic challenger Colin Allred from "likely Republican" to "leans Republican."
“I was watching a focus group a couple of weeks ago of undecided Trump voters in this Senate race, and they immediately brought up Cancun,” Taylor said during an appearance on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal.
“He was very much assailed for this. There was sort of this iconic image of him coming back, rolling a suitcase with a Texas [COVID] mask," she said. "Allred features that in a lot of his ads. Talks about Ted Cruz abandoned us when we needed him.”
Of course, 2021 was a long time and a lot of tequila ago, and the memory gets fuzzy. What was so bad about Cruz taking a jaunt to Mexico? Think, think, think ... oh yeah, that was when the lights went out across the state, water systems shut down and at least 246 Texans died during The Great Texas Freeze, a record-setting winter storm that fried the state's electrical grid.
Yeah, zipping from Houston down to Mexico was not a good look for Cruz then, though to be fair, he did blame his kids for the trip, those rascals, and he came right back after Texans' rage thawed some of the ice that was afflicting us, so holding that against him might seem a touch harsh. After all, Cruz is a lawyer. It's not like he could hang a power transformer or stand hip deep in frigid water to fix a busted main. There are working people underpaid to take those risks (some of them immigrants). Why be cold if you don't have to be?
People in 2021 didn't see it that way.
“I mean, even for Ted Cruz, this is a new low,” Zack Malitz, treasurer of the Boot Texas Republicans Political Action Committee, told the Observer back then. “It’s an incredible dereliction of duty to leave the state when millions of his constituents don’t have power, don’t have heat, don’t have water. There’s so much that he as a member of Congress could be doing right now.”
Malitz suggested things like using his position to deal with regulators and government agencies to help speed relief to suffering Texans. We suppose Cruz could at least have provided moral support ... wait ... Ted Cruz and moral support. Perhaps not.
Still, could Cruz's booking it while the icy hand of death snatched away the last warm breaths of more than a few of his constituents — old and poor people, prolly — be dispositive in this Senate election? You'd think it would matter more that the day after the Jan. 6 riots he was one of only six senators to vote to sustain objections to counting Arizona's election results in the last presidential election, which might have effectively denied Joe Biden's victory.
And what about his previous hardline anti-abortion stances? No, really, what about them? The senator has been mighty quiet on that score, scuttling away from the abortion issue like it was a blue northern rolling down from Saskatchewan.
With all that, could the "Flyin' Ted" issue from so long ago really matter? We put that question to Matthew J. Eshbaugh-Soha, a political science professor at the University of North Texas."He's able to attack his character, and Ted Cruz has never been overwhelmingly liked." – Matthew J. Eshbaugh-Soha, University of North Texas
tweet this
His answer: maybe.
"Allred's running a very effective campaign," Eshbaugh-Soha says. "So, he’s neutralizing the border issue by saying Cruz hasn't done anything about it. He's playing the abortion issue in a way that Republicans don't look good among, particularly, suburban women. And then he's able to attack his character, and Ted Cruz has never been overwhelmingly liked."
(If someone gave awards for understatement, "never been overwhelmingly liked" would take the gold.)
Democrats are going to vote Democrat and Republicans are going to vote Republican, he said, but memories of Cruz's jaunt might stir a few more likely Democratic voters to haul themselves to the polls and influence the minds of undecided voters, as the Cook Political Report's shift suggested. So, Allred's ads featuring images of Cruz wheeling his suitcase through the airport as he returned from Mexico are on point.
"I think it's very effective," Eshbaugh-Soha says. "He's kind of playing off the national campaign. Donald Trump just thinks about Donald Trump — you're making a character attack that I think works pretty well. And Ted Cruz cares about Ted and, look, he went to Cancun when everyone was freezing."
For good or ill, Cruz does have much higher name recognition than Allred, though. Add it up, and that means tonight's debate between Cruz and Allred on WFAA may be a rare thing: a political debate that actually makes a difference in the outcome of an election.
But before Texas Democrats start fantasizing AGAIN about electing their first candidate to statewide office in three decades, they should recall that Cruz, a Harvard-educated lawyer and former solicitor general of Texas, is strong in debates.
"If people are wondering if they're willing to give Colin Allred a shot, they're going to tune into that debate and they're going to watch, and if he has a good performance he might convince a few people," Eshbaugh-Soha says " ... If Allred does really well ... that could make the difference."
Cruz and Allred will face off at 7 p.m., Tuesday, at the WFAA Studios in downtown Dallas. You can catch it on-air or via WFAA's streaming app.
