Cruz looks to ease bad blood with GOP establishment After his bruising loss, the Texas senator who loved making enemies aims to repair broken relationships by campaigning for Republican senators.
By Katie Glueck and Burgess Everett
Ted Cruz’s associates insist he’s returning to the Senate as the same uncompromising, hell-bent conservative he’s always been. But one thing is different, and it’s glaring: The senator who made enemies with fellow Republican senators and bragged about it to voters now wants to play nice — or at least his version of nice — with his colleagues.
And the first step to improving his rancorous relationships, the Texas senator’s allies say, will be to help them keep their Senate seats. The freshman senator wants to return to the campaign trail this fall as a conservative surrogate for Republicans aiming to turn out the GOP base, they say.
“That can go a long way toward establishing good relationships,” said a senior Cruz adviser. “At the same time, though, I’d be wildly surprised if he suddenly started moderating his principles just to get along.”
Cruz’s political team is still determining how much Cruz will get involved in down-ballot elections and where he would go to campaign. But according to interviews with more than a half-dozen of Cruz’s friends, aides and allies, he wants to be engaged this fall on behalf of his GOP colleagues and hopefully to get some them to reciprocate the goodwill.
But while some Republicans will welcome his assistance, others are wary, if not outright opposed, to campaigning with Cruz — a sign that reversing years of pent-up animosity won’t come easily.
As Cruz preps for reelection in 2018 and eyes a 2020 presidential bid, there’s a tacit recognition among some members of his political circle that the opposition he faced from his own Republican colleagues was a real problem for his candidacy as the primary field dwindled. Only three senators publicly endorsed him, and the bad blood Cruz engendered over the years among Republicans prevented him from coalescing the anti-Trump crowd when he needed to most.
It’s not that Cruz feels he has anything to apologize for — his outreach will go only so far — but his team does see down-ballot campaigning as offering a mutually beneficial way to reset relationships. They believe other senators would be smart to embrace the help.
Cruz’s advisers say his second-place finish in the race for the GOP nomination and proven ability to turn out conservatives make him a valuable asset for Republicans in tough races. National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) said he expects Cruz to play a major role in the battle for Senate control this fall.
“I think politicians are practical people,” said the senior Cruz adviser. “They’re going to be pretty interested in the kind of support he can give them. ... I think fewer people would say they don’t want him now.”
Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), facing a stiff reelection challenge from Missouri Secretary of State Jason Kander, noted that Cruz’s campaign manager, Jeff Roe, is from the state.
“He had a lot of Missouri supporters,” Blunt, after a long pause, said of Cruz. “I’d be glad to have him in the state.”
Sens. Johnny Isakson of Georgia and John Boozman of Arkansas, both up for reelection in conservative territory, also said they'd be happy to have Cruz on the trail with them.
Others, though, sounded far less welcoming, particularly in states where Cruz’s brand of conservatism might not play well with independent voters.
Several Cruz associates have mentioned New Hampshire as one place where he could be useful. Cruz, who notched nearly 12 percent in that state’s primary, could help turn out the GOP base for Sen. Kelly Ayotte, they’ve suggested.
But Ayotte isn’t interested.
“Uh, no. I don’t think I’d ask anyone to come up, generally, other than I had Joni [Ernst] and Shelley [Moore Capito] up. … This is about me campaigning for New Hampshire,” she said, when asked whether she wanted Cruz to campaign for her. “I’m going to be focusing on my campaign for me. It’s not a reflection on him, or anyone else. … He hasn’t contacted me, but I’m sure there’s a lot of different races out there.”
Then there’s Arizona, where Cruz pulled in a quarter of the electorate and GOP Sen. John McCain is squeezed between conservative primary challengers and a tough Democratic opponent, Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick.
McCain, who has tangled with Cruz repeatedly, said he’s had only one interaction with Cruz since he returned to Washington a few weeks ago, on a defense spending bill. McCain supported it and Cruz, as he has in the past, opposed the measure.
“I wonder how the men and women serving in the military in Texas enjoy that,” McCain said. The longtime senator said he rarely asks surrogates to stump for him, “except for people I’m very close to. And I’m not close to Sen. Cruz.”
Other senators said they, too, have had almost no dealings with Cruz since he dropped out of the presidential race early this month. He returned to Washington for a defense bill mark-up and a news conference, then promptly took a week off from the Senate in Mexico to convalesce from the campaign. He returned on Wednesday for the last few minutes of a caucus lunch and said little, according to an attendee.
Cruz declined to comment on any plans to campaign for Senate and House candidates. By contrast, Sen. Marco Rubio said that once the Senate goes on recess, “I intend to do as much as I can, wherever I can be helpful.”
There’s still time for Cruz to build bridges with Republican senators, even after repeatedly dismissing them as part of the “Washington cartel” and calling Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell a liar. Several senators said they’re willing to let bygones be bygones.
But it’s not going to happen overnight.
Cruz’s allies bristle at the suggestion that he’s entirely to blame for the bad blood between him and other senators — it’s a two-way street, they insist. Still, Cruz will be re-evaluating how he approaches his colleagues, a source close to him said. That person said the outright hostility Cruz faced from his colleagues hampered his ability to gain momentum against Donald Trump at a critical time in the presidential race.
“Would he have a different approach? You don’t necessarily have to have all the negativity that emerged,” the source said. “To some extent, he was able to use it as a source of pride, but at the same time, it caused some grief in terms of ultimately getting support, endorsements, getting the party people behind you.”
Another source familiar with Cruz’s thinking said, “I think he’ll certainly try to get to be more friendly with his colleagues.” At the same time, the person added, “you saw the endorsements Rubio had, (and) it didn’t do him much good, either.”
At a minimum, Cruz is poised to help conservatives up for reelection in deep-red states — though those aren’t the battlegrounds where the Senate will be won or lost.
“I think he is going to be very much in demand around the country for exactly that purpose because he is recognized far and wide, without any introduction, as the leader of the conservative movement in America right now,” said Ken Cuccinelli, head of the Senate Conservatives Fund, a group that works to elect conservative candidates.
Whether Cruz will be invited to campaign in swing-state races is less clear. Wisconsin will be one test case: Cruz won the Republican primary there, giving him a big shot of momentum against Trump. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) is an underdog in his reelection race, running as an unabashed conservative in a state that has gone reliably blue in presidential election years. He said last week that he’ll “need a lot of help and support. So we’ll see how it works.”
Sen. Chuck Grassley, facing a spirited Democratic challenge in Iowa, a swing state, said he would welcome Cruz.
“I would say since he carried Iowa in the caucus, the answer to that would be yes,” Grassley said of accepting Cruz’s help.
But Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) refused to entertain the possibility of campaigning alongside Cruz, responding that he’s “not going to go into what my campaign is doing.” And Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio), another vulnerable incumbent, said he hadn’t thought about enlisting Cruz.
“I don’t think any senator would say no if I asked ‘em. Every senator’s been helpful that I’ve asked,” Portman said. “I just don't think endorsements matter that much in politics.”
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/05/cruz-senate-races-223575
