Republican Sen. Ted Cruz is touting himself as a bipartisan legislator as polls show his Democratic rival, Rep. Colin Allred, within striking distance in the Texas Senate race. But Cruz’s recent partisan actions and track record as a senator disprove his claims of neutrality.
A recent poll from Public Policy Polling shows Cruz ahead of Allred by 1 percentage point, while a poll from Emerson College had Cruz ahead by 4. Cruz won his first Senate race in 2012 by nearly 16 points, while his 2018 reelection bid vs. Beto O’Rourke was much closer—Cruz won that race by a mere 2.6 points.
“What is new is not that I’m passing bipartisan legislation that helps produce jobs in Texas. I’ve been doing that since the day I arrived in the Senate,” Cruz insisted in an interview with Politico.
The stalwart Donald Trump ally has been attempting to soften his image as a conservative culture warrior during the current election cycle.
But his Senate voting history tells a different story
The Lugar Center and the Georgetown University McCourt School of Public Policy released a report in May ranking senators by how bipartisan their votes were in the most recent session of Congress. Out of 98 senators (the majority and minority leaders were excluded), Cruz ranked 89th. In fact, Cruz has become more partisan by this measure, since he ranked 85th in the previous report.
His recent political stances also call Cruz’s attempt at reinvention into question.
Cruz was among the 50 senators that voted against cloture for a bipartisan border security bill, causing it to fall short of the 60 votes needed for a full vote in the Senate. In his statement announcing his opposition, Cruz referred to a “literal invasion of millions upon millions of illegal aliens”
Allred criticized Cruz’s actions in a Sept. 27 appearance on MSNBC’s “The Last Word.”
“It’s kind of a joke that Ted Cruz comes down to south Texas and puts on his outdoor clothes and tries to look tough, and then goes back to Washington and does nothing at all to help,” Allred said.
Cruz has also championed other right-wing initiatives that run counter to any claims of bipartisanship.
The Texas senator was among those who attempted to usurp the result of the 2020 election, won by President Joe Biden. Cruz represented Trump in lawsuits seeking to disqualify votes for Biden in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Georgia. In a 2022 television appearance, Cruz would not acknowledge that Biden had won the race.
In 2013, Cruz engaged in a 21-hour filibuster that held up funding of the federal government, while making the argument that the Affordable Care Act (commonly known as Obamacare) should be defunded.
His actions contributed to a 21-day government shutdown, ultimately costing the country over $24 billion in lost economic output.
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