Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, won his re-election bid last week against media darling Beto O’Rourke, but Republicans should not get comfortable in the Lone Star State.
The Texas Senate race raised far too many warning flags.
First, the race should’ve never been this close. The fact that a Republican incumbent beat a progressive Senate candidate in Texas by only 2.6 points should be a wake-up moment for the GOP. The slim margin of victory should worry Republicans, especially considering Cruz first won that seat in 2012 by defeating Democratic former state Rep. Paul Sadler by a whopping 16 points. From 16 to just 2.6 points in six years is an exceptionally steep drop, and I don’t think Democrats can take all the credit for this.
It’s true Cruz was outspent by O’Rourke, who managed to raise $69 million for a race Democrats ultimately lost. It’s also true that the press’ coverage of the race disproportionately favored O’Rourke, who was the subject of far too many nauseatingly glossy media profiles. But this is Texas. This is not exactly competitive territory for an out-and-out progressive challenger, especially when matched up against a conservative incumbent.
Second, Cruz should take note of a CNN survey published shortly after the midterm election showing more native Texans voted for O’Rourke.
About 51 percent of self-identified native Texans voted for the Democrat, while a smaller 48 percent of native Texans pulled for Cruz, according to the CNN exit poll. In contrast, 57 percent of respondents self-identified Texas transplants voted for Cruz, while a smaller 42 percent of the same voted for O’Rourke.
It’s not a big point, and exit polling data is always a little dicey, but if there’s one thing we can try to infer from this it is that part of Cruz’s message bombed with voters. A big part of the Republican’s appeal to voters focused on stressing that O’Rourke was the beneficiary of outsiders: outside cash, outside support from Hollywood celebrities, and endorsements from outside Democratic notables. The message here is: Cruz is the true Texan and O’Rourke is the errand boy for out-of-state interests. But when it came time to vote, native Texans apparently didn’t agree or care about Cruz’s message. Outside cash or not, they voted for O’Rourke. It was the transplants, the sort of people that Cruz’s message was aimed against, that voted for Cruz.
Taken together, the above data points suggest serious problems for Cruz, including that he has hemorrhaged support, that there is clearly some enthusiasm in the state for progressive candidates, and that Texans are ignoring parts (if not all) of Cruz’s message. That should scare the senator. That should certainly scare Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.
Cruz may have won last Tuesday, but he is going to have to make several serious changes if he wants to hold on to that seat for another term. The Texas senator’s 2018 midterm victory may be his last if he ignores all the obvious warnings.
–
An earlier version of this article stated incorrectly that Cruz’s internal polling showed O’Rourke beating him by double-digits. The opposite is true; it showed Cruz beating his Democratic opponent by double digits prior to President Trump’s visit in late October. We regret the error.
