WASHINGTON – Ted Cruz has effectively ruled out a presidential run next year, declaring that he’ll focus only on winning a third Senate term rather than seeking both jobs simultaneously.
“I’m running for reelection to Senate in 2024,” he told The Dallas Morning News on Tuesday.
That reaffirmed his comments to supporters on a conference call Monday night, when he also boasted that Democrats fear him more than any Republican besides former president Donald Trump – suggesting he expects another tough fight to keep his Senate seat.
Cruz made no secret after falling short in 2016 that he intended to try again. Until now he had kept the door open at least a crack, emphasizing in November that “there will be plenty of time to discuss 2024 presidential.”
His latest comments were far less equivocal. Pressed by The News on whether it’s correct to infer that he’s decided to sit out the race, he would say only: “You have my answer.”
Hints that Cruz would pass have been piling up.
In a Feb. 5 appearance on CBS News’ “Face the Nation,” when moderator Margaret Brennan asked if he will run for president next year he responded: “I’m running for reelection to the Senate. There’s a reason I’m in Texas today. I’m not in Iowa, I’m in Texas, and I’m fighting for 30 million Texans.”
Cruz has barely registered in presidential polls so far, despite having been Trump’s runner-up in 2016, the last contested GOP nomination fight.
The 45th president has cast a long shadow over the GOP field, especially for would-be rivals like Cruz whose base overlaps with his, though several veterans of his cabinet are challenging him, including Vice President Mike Pence and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. That list grew Tuesday morning when Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor and Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations, jumped into the race.
Trump held commanding 10- to 26-point leads in three polls taken in the last month among GOP primary voters nationwide. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is in second place. Pence is a distant third with single digit support, trailed by Haley.
Cruz registered 1% in two of those polls, and 3% in another, about even with Pompeo.
“I’m on the ballot in 2024. I’m running for reelection,” Cruz said during the Monday night call, according to the Houston Chronicle.
Cruz told supporters he expects Democrats to unleash at least $100 million trying to end his Senate career. Beto O’Rourke came close in 2018, holding Cruz below 50%.
The incumbent’s 2.6 percentage point margin of victory was the worst showing for a statewide Republican nominee in Texas in two decades, a weak credential for a presidential run.
“After Donald Trump there is no Republican in the country that Democrats want to beat more than me,” Cruz told supporters Monday night, according to the Chronicle, saying he’s focused on keeping his seat for a third term “so we keep Texas red.”
Under Texas’s unusual “LBJ law,” Cruz could have run simultaneously for a third Senate term and for the White House.
Realistically, though, voters back home and in presidential battlegrounds like Iowa and New Hampshire would have questioned such a naked display of ambition and bet-hedging.
Cruz ended up winning the opening contest of 2016, the Iowa caucuses, and 10 more states. His star has dimmed somewhat since then.
So has O’Rourke’s, and it’s unlikely Democrats will send him up against Cruz again. He was forced from the 2020 Democratic presidential race early. And Gov. Greg Abbott trounced him in November.
A handful of other Democrats have signaled interest in taking on Cruz in 2024.
Speculation has included Dallas Rep. Colin Allred.
On Monday, San Antonio Rep. Joaquin Castro blasted a fundraising email titled “dishonorable Ted Cruz,” hitting the senator for promoting a two-term limit for senators even as he seeks reelection.
“Texans deserve better than a hypocrite like Ted Cruz representing them in the United States Senate,” Castro wrote. “Senator Cruz should stick to his own rules and back out of the 2024 Senate race. Pitch in here if you agree!”
It wasn’t clear if Castro is angling to challenge Cruz himself, or just trying to soften him up for another Democrat –his brother, for instance. Julian Castro was housing secretary in the Obama administration and San Antonio mayor before that.
The Legislature enacted the LBJ law in April 1959 as a gift to Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson, allowing him – and future Texans —to run for president or vice president without having to drop out of a U.S. Senate race.
Johnson ended up as John Kennedy’s running mate in 1960 and later as president, after the assassination in Dallas three after their victory. LBJ also won the Senate race in 1960, handily defeating Republican John Tower, who nabbed the seat a few months later in a special election.
In 1988, Democratic Sen. Lloyd Bentsen used the LBJ law to keep his Senate seat even as he lost a bid for vice president at the side of Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis. (They lost to another Texan, George Bush.)
Cruz made his first forays into Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina – laying groundwork in the states that host the first three nominating contests – in summer 2013, only a few months after taking office as a senator.
In March 2015 he became the first declared GOP presidential candidate – the equivalent of a month from now.
But the 2024 scramble is already well underway, thanks to Trump’s announcement of a comeback bid on Nov. 16, just after the midterm elections, which set a new bar for an early launch.
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