SAN MARCOS, Texas (AP) – It’s a refrain Ted Cruz has long used, but he’s trotting it out more frequently these days – laying on the Texas charm thick for audiences in his home state, where his popularity may suddenly be on the line.
“Give me a horse, a gun and an open plain, and we can conquer the world,” the Republican senator told a recent roundtable of business owners in San Marcos, one of America’s fastest-growing communities, fueled by booming job markets in nearby Austin and San Antonio. “That’s what our state was built on, and that’s what I’m fighting for every day.”
Cruz won 11 states and finished a surprising second in the GOP presidential primary, but his popularity may be slipping nationally and back in Texas after he refused to endorse Donald Trump and was booed at the Republican National Convention. Cruz did an about-face in late September and said he supported Trump, but that now looks like unfortunate political timing, coming two weeks before the release of a 2005 video in which the billionaire businessman can be heard bragging about grabbing women’s genitals and kissing them without permission.
The moves by Cruz angered some establishment Texas Republicans who never fully supported him while alienating parts of his tea party base that had long since embraced Trump and wondered what took Cruz so long. Also disappointed were true-believer conservatives who liked Cruz’s shunning of Trump and were sorry to see him abandon it.
Cruz isn’t up for re-election until 2018 but he now may face a serious challenger in Texas’ Republican primary for U.S. Senate, once unthinkable for a man seen as a rising political star in his state even before he jumped into a presidential race that raised his national profile.