Ted Cruz's come-from-behind 2012 win could influence his presidential bid
AUSTIN — Three years ago, Ted Cruz surged from relative obscurity to upset a well-known Texas politician and win a seat in the U.S. Senate, using a grass-roots, hard-charging, outsider-versus-establishment attack.
It’s a strategy some believe he could replicate in his current bid for the White House.
But how far the tactic — that led to one of the most surprising upsets in recent Texas politics — will take the maverick senator remains to be seen.
“In some ways he’s doing some of the same good steps: raising money, communicating the message, communicating his candidacy,” said Michael Baselice, an Austin-based political pollster who worked for Cruz’s opponent in the 2012 race, then-lieutenant governor David Dewhurst. “So far, it’s working.”
As the race began, Cruz was a 40-year-old litigator in a Houston law firm who had served as Texas solicitor general but had very little name recognition. Dewhurst was lieutenant governor and the party establishment favorite.
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At the race’s start, Cruz garnered just 1% to 3% support , compared with 23% to 27% for Dewhurst, according to polls at the time.
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Cruz’s strategy was to attach himself to the anti-establishment Tea Party and crisscross the state to attend every local meeting and gathering he could get into, said Mark Jones, a political scientist at Rice University in Houston.
“Cruz barnstormed his way across Texas in an almost unprecedented way, meeting with any and every Tea Party group that would have him,” Jones said. “While pretty much everyone discounted him from the start, Cruz believed in himself and his message.”
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Joining him at some of those early meetings was Robert Stovall, a Republican activist who was campaigning himself for Bexar County tax assessor. Stovall joined Cruz at Tea Party gatherings in sports bars and hamburger joints in and around San Antonio. Around 30 to 70 people would show up to each event, he said.
Cruz electrified the small crowds with impassioned speeches and promises to shake things up in Washington if elected, Stovall said.
“He was very articulate, smart, well-spoken,” he said. “Once he talked to them, they were sold. He’s got that kind of dynamic.”
Cruz’s name began to spread and he rose in the polls, to double digits by the summer of 2011 and then nearly 30% by spring of 2012.
He was helped along by an ineffective campaign by Dewhurst, which was plagued by corruption and misuse of funds, as well as super PACs that sided with Cruz and bankrolled ads attacking Dewhurst. The anti-tax group Club for Growth was one of his biggest supporters, spending more than $5.5 million on the Senate race, the bulk of it attacking Dewhurst, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
Cruz beat Dewhurst in the GOP primary runoff and went on to easily defeat his Democratic opponent to win the Senate seat.
His candidacy for president appears to be taking much the same tack: tirelessly attending meetings and spreading his anti-Washington message to Tea Party and evangelical groups, said James Henson, director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin. “They’ve been very clever and very effective at sustaining this insurgent image," he said. "He’s in pretty good shape, even though he’s a U.S. senator."
Cruz is also again winning favor from super PACs, which had raised $38 million to boost his candidacy by the end of June. Cruz trails only Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton in total money raised, when super PAC money is factored in. That could help sail him through the initial primaries in February and into the "Super Tuesday" primary on March 1 that includes Texas, which he's expected to win, Jones said.
"He’s gaining momentum, building his base of support, raising money and has a plan," he said.
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But while his populist, outsider message plays well with Republican primary voters, Cruz will have a much tougher time deploying such a strategy in the general election, should he win his party’s nomination, Henson said. “It’s an open question whether he can win a national campaign based solely on that strategy,” he said.
Cruz also lacks support from his Republican colleagues in Congress, whom he’s alienated with his anti-establishment rhetoric, said Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics. In a general election, he could win solidly conservative states, such as Texas and Oklahoma, but would be hard-pressed to sway voters in crucial swing states like Ohio and Florida, Sabato said.
The come-from-behind, anti-Washington express that worked so well in Texas would derail in a general election next November, Sabato said.
“The giant difference is that America is not Texas,” he said. “That’s his problem.”
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