Ted Cruz battles, and boosted by, likability challenge

Sen. Ted Cruz’s brashness and willingness to denounce Senate colleagues for their perceived lack of conservative chops have made him wildly popular among Republican voters and have helped him surge to the top of the polls.

It’s also made him one of the most disliked elected officials in recent Washington history — an animosity emanating from both parties. From orchestrating a government shutdown over President Obama’s Affordable Care Act in 2013 to calling Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., a liar on the Senate floor, Cruz has drawn the ire of colleagues across the Hill.

At a gathering of Republican donors in Denver last year, former president George W. Bush commented, "I just don't like the guy." Last week, former Kansas senator and 1996 Republican presidential nominee Bob Dole was the latest to denounce the Texas senator in an unflattering media interview.

“I don’t know how he’s going to deal with Congress,” Dole told The New York Times. “Nobody likes him.”

His chief rival in the GOP contest, billionaire Donald Trump, has also attacked Cruz's likability, telling CNN on Monday that Cruz would be ineffective as president because he lacks people skills. "Ted cannot get along with anybody," Trump said. "He’s a nasty person."

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Cruz’s campaign — and the senator himself — says his unpopularity stems from his unwillingness to compromise his conservative values for deal-cutting in Washington.

“What is problematic in the Senate, from other senators’ perspective, is speaking the truth, actually saying what’s going on,” Cruz said on Fox News on Sunday. “The unpardonable sin that I’ve committed is that I actually speak the truth and say, ‘Why is Republican leadership funding the Democrats’ objectives?’ ”

But rubbing people the wrong way has been a Cruz quality stretching back decades and the resentment he’s built in the halls of Congress is more layered and complex than he or his campaign suggest.

In his autobiography, Ted Cruz: A Time for Truth, Cruz details various awkward attempts throughout his life at trying to shed an irksome personality and become better liked. As a teen, he learned to play sports and changed his name from Rafael — or “Felito,” short for the diminutive Rafaelito — to Ted to try to end the teasing.

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“That mix — excelling in the classroom, being too competitive and cocky about academics, and being lousy at sports — was, needless to say, not a recipe for popularity,” he writes. He adds: “I was tired of being teased.”

Cruz describes other incidents, including getting beat up by four bigger kids in high school, getting in trouble for defacing a rival school, and running up a $2,000 gambling bet later in college — all attempts at fitting in.

At Princeton, Cruz excelled in academics and became a debate champion, but he also irked classmates along the way. Craig Mazin, Cruz’s former roommate at Princeton, has become somewhat of a social media sensation over the past two months by posting college memories of Cruz on his Twitter account, none of them flattering.

“As a freshman,” Mazin, now a Hollywood screenwriter, wrote in in a tweet earlier this month, “I would get into senior parties because I was Ted’s roommate. OUT OF PITY. He was that widely loathed. It’s his superpower.”

Cruz’s campaign didn’t comment specifically for this story. A Cruz spokesman forwarded a recent Gallup poll showing Cruz leading the pack of GOP hopefuls in favorability among Republicans and Republican-leaning independents, with a 61% favorable rating, compared to 16% unfavorable.

But a similar Gallup poll taken in November of voters of all parties nationwide shows Cruz in eighth place among all presidential candidates, with a 28% favorable rating and 31% unfavorable.

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“Cruz has arguably the highest favorability of any Republican among Republican voters,” said Mark Jones, a political scientist at Rice University. “But his low approvals among independents and Democrats will adversely affect him in a general election, not only losing the presidency but also the Senate and possibly the House, as well.”

In Texas, Cruz became known as a principled conservative — regardless of who he irritated along the wrong way.

“People who know him, like him,” said Allen Blakemore, a Republican political consultant based in Houston. “He is a more intense, more serious guy than a lot of other folks. Everything he does, he does with purpose. To some degree, that may be a little off-putting to some people.”

Cruz’s 2012 primary upset of David Dewhurst, who was Texas' lieutenant governor at the time, to win his Senate seat was built on promises to shake things up in Washington — a promise he has undoubtedly kept. And that has bolstered his popularity among his Tea Party constituents.

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“He does what he says he’s going to do,” said Mike Baselice, an Austin-based Republican pollster who worked in Dewhurst’s losing effort against Cruz. “That what makes him so likable. Voters see a guy who is principled, conservative and who could shake things up.”

Cruz’s tactics in Washington, however, are seen by some detractors as more political calculation than unwavering principled stands. An oft-repeated example is that of Trade Promotion Authority which Cruz initially supported last year. He even co-wrote an op-ed piece in The Wall Street Journal with House Speaker Paul Ryan urging its passage. Cruz then opposed it two months later, a move that angered Republican colleagues but likely pleased his Tea Party constituents, who largely opposed the agreement.

"From the minute he came to Congress, he didn’t care about passing legislation or working with his colleagues," said Brian Walsh, a Washington-based Republican strategist and former top aide to Majority Whip John Cornyn, R-Texas. "He was only interested in running for president."

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Ironically, each time Cruz publicly rails against his Republican colleagues and legislation they're trying to pass, it forces Republican lawmakers to make further concessions to Democrats, Walsh said. "Time and again, we've actually ended up with less conservative legislation [because of Cruz]," he said. "But that’s really not what he cares about. At the end of the day, it's about what he can do to advance his own career."

Outside Congress, Cruz’s image as a brash agitator of business-as-usual in Washington so far seems a perfect fit for voter angst and frustration this election season. It remains to be seen whether Cruz can mobilize enough of that angst to the polls to win his party’s nomination and, ultimately, the White House.

“Voters in this election, more so than in any other election I’ve seen, are looking for someone who could take on Washington and the establishment,” Baselice said. “[Cruz] doesn’t just talk the talk, he walks the walk.”