A political action committee has been set up to specifically try to take down Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz in next year’s elections.
The new group, called the Lose Cruz PAC, is hoping to capitalize on the low approval ratings that Cruz has to flip the seat from Republican to Democrat. If they were successful in doing so, it would mark the first time since back in 1993 that a Democrat held this Senate seat in the Lonestar State.
While the new PAC hasn’t specifically endorsed one person who will challenge Cruz in the election, it stands to reason that Democratic Representative Colin Allred – who is considering a run for the seat – could be a major beneficiary of the group’s work.
The PAC, which has set up a website, posted a note that read:
“Lose Cruz is a campaign led by Texans who are laser-focused on one goal: defeating Ted Cruz. We’re shining a light on his record to remind folks just how extreme and out of touch he is with everyday Texans.
“Cruz represents a clear and present danger to American democracy. His destructive brand of politics and extremism has divided our country and limited our freedoms.”
The last time Cruz ran for re-election in 2018, he only narrowly won the seat. His victory over Democrat Beto O’Rourke was only 3 points, which foreshadows that he could be quite vulnerable in the 2024 election.
Many outside groups are hoping to capitalize on this fact, as well as multiple controversies that are surrounding Cruz, to unseat him from the Senate.
The Washington Examiner reported that it’s likely that the Lose Cruz PAC will try to tie him with other unpopular politicians in Texas. That will likely include Ken Paxton, the state’s attorney general who last month was impeached after it was alleged that he abused his office and committed bribery.
It’s also very possible that the PAC will bring up a 2021 scandal that involved Cruz, where the senator went on vacation to Mexico while the people of his state were dealing with major power outages that occurred from a severe winter storm.
Despite all of this, the Lose Cruz PAC – and Democrats in general – will have an uphill battle getting someone to defeat the incumbent Texas senator. Cruz has huge name recognition – he once ran for president – and the state has a strong Republican base.
The Cook Political Report, a non-partisan outlet that predicts upcoming elections, says that the seat that Cruz currently occupies is expected to lean Republican in the 2024 election.
For his part, Cruz doesn’t seem to be too concerned about his upcoming re-election. As a spokesperson for the senator said in a statement provided to the Washington Examiner:
“It’s not surprising that Democrats are already starting to pour money into Colin Allred’s campaign. He has no name ID and is running on a radical leftist record that Texans have rejected time and time again. Allred is a reflection of the current state of the Democrat Party in Texas: unpopular, unknown and hopeless.”
