President Trump will face a tougher race in historically red Texas this time around, according to Republican Sen. Ted Cruz.
“Texas is a battleground,” Cruz told the Christian Science Monitor on Thursday. “Texas is going to be hotly contested in 2020. I believe the president will win Texas. I think it will be closer than last time.”
Trump won the state in the 2016 presidential election, beating Hillary Clinton by 9 percentage points. It was the Republican Party’s narrowest margin of victory in more than 20 years, when Bill Clinton lost the state to President George H.W. Bush by 3.5 percentage points.
“The far left is pissed off. They hate the president and that is a powerful motivator,” Cruz said. “If the left shows up in massive numbers and everybody else doesn’t, that’s how we end up with an incredibly damaging election.”
Cruz himself narrowly won reelection in 2018 as he battled former Rep. Beto O’Rourke to keep his Senate seat. Cruz edged out O’Rourke, who is now running for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, by less than three percentage points.
Cruz, who ran against Trump for the Republican nomination in 2016, said he is still eyeing the White House.
“Look, I hope to run again,” he said. “We came very, very close in 2016. And it’s the most fun I’ve ever had in my life.”
