A team of Texas operatives has launched a super PAC aimed at unseating Republican Sen. Ted Cruz.
The political action committee, called Sensible Americans, officially began work this week. Organizers say their goal is to make the case to Texas voters that — in their view — Cruz doesn’t deserve a third term. The general election is Nov. 5, 2024.
“It’s a Texas group of folks with a lot of experience about Texas politics that have a keen desire to see someone who’s abandoned the state and betrayed the country removed from office,” said Sean Haynes, the founder and director of the PAC.
A spokesperson for Cruz’s campaign said the new PAC, made mostly of Democrats, was designed to boost the campaign for U.S. Rep. Colin Allred, the Dallas Democrat who is running for Senate.
“He has no name ID and is running on a radical leftist record that Texans have rejected time and time again,” according to a Cruz campaign statement provided to The Dallas Morning News. “Allred is a reflection of the current state of the Democrat Party in Texas: unpopular, unknown, and hopeless.”
Haynes said the PAC hopes to raise “seven figures.” The money will be used for research, digital ads, social media outreach and some organizing.
Most of the advisers to the PAC are Democrats and have years of experience in working for Texas Democratic candidates.
A super PAC is an independent political action committee allowed to raise unlimited sums of money from businesses, unions and individuals. Such groups are not allowed to coordinate with political parties or candidates.
Sensible Americans’ campaign against the incumbent senator is called “Lose Cruz,” and it will rely heavily on educating potential voters about what could be perceived as unflattering parts of Cruz’s record, including his Cancún trip in the aftermath of the 2021 winter storm that killed 246 Texans and left millions without power and water.
PAC leaders said they would also focus on Cruz’s actions during the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, claiming he tried to thwart the certification of President Joe Biden’s victory over Donald Trump. Cruz did not echo Trump’s baseless claims about ballot manipulation and cheating in the 2020 election. But he pushed for a 10-day delay in Congress affirming Biden’s Electoral College victory.
“The one thing that can bring everyone together is a common hatred of Ted Cruz,” said Haynes, who has worked for Democrats as well as former GOP House Speaker Joe Straus. “We can all know that he’s an unlikable guy, but what we really want to do is be the tip of the spear to start early and often to launch this effort of negatively framing him.”
Seeking third term
Cruz, who was first elected in 2012 after being a darling of the conservative tea party movement, is seeking his third term in the Senate, where he’s become one of the most vocal and controversial elected officials.
In 2018, he beat former U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke, D-El Paso, by 2.6 percentage points. Democrats say the close result showed his weakness in the state, though it also confirmed that conservative Republicans voters represented the state’s most formidable voting bloc and would be hard to beat in subsequent elections.
Democrats hope Cruz is vulnerable in Texas and that adequate messaging and outreach will help defeat him.
“The right way to go about attacking him is having broad enough appeal to persuade folks in the middle,” Haynes said. “You have to appeal in a way that gives permission to folks who haven’t pulled the lever for Democrats here, ever.”
“It’s not a single staffer backed by a ton of money just trying to throw money at the problem,” said communications strategist Sawyer Hackett, an adviser for the group who has worked for former U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro. “It is a group of people that worked in Texas politics, both on the right and on the left end of the middle.”
The Lose Cruz campaign is only aimed at the incumbent Republican. The group is not getting involved with the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate.
Allred has launched a campaign against Cruz. Texas Sen. Roland Gutierrez, D-San Antonio, is expected to announce his candidacy this summer. Former Midland City Council member John Love is already in the field with Allred, and other contenders are expected to emerge.
It will take more than Democrats to beat Cruz in an electorate that has leaned Republican since 1994, the last time a Democrat won a statewide race in Texas.
Leaders of the PAC said they would also focus on “digital organizing” as a way to appeal to soft Republicans, independents and new voters.
Olivia Julianna, a 20-year-old Democratic organizer from Houston and PAC adviser, said Cruz was a mostly absentee senator who helped craft a negative image of Texas.
“I don’t think it accurately reflects the people of Texas or accurately reflects the spirit of Texas,” she said of Cruz’s service in the Senate. “We [young Texans] didn’t live in the heyday of the Texas Democratic Party. We didn’t get to see Ann Richards and Barbara Jordan in their prime. It’s really important to tell that history and to tell the truth about Texas, especially because you don’t learn it in school.”
Democratic strategist Matt Angle is an adviser for the PAC. He said the message about Cruz should be based on facts, not the incumbent’s personality.
“Everybody and their brother-in-law is going to be talking about Ted Cruz and using their dislike for Ted Cruz as a reason to promote their organization or to promote their cause,” said Angle, founder of the Democratic research group called the Lone Star Project. “Outraged or anger at Ted Cruz is not unusual. What is unusual is really focusing on the reasons for him to be replaced, to focus on how much damage he does to Texas.”
