Ted Cruz says voters were “pissed off,” and after Tuesday night, he is the last Republican holding statewide office in Texas.
The Texas senator posted a statement Wednesday evening that ran more than 30 paragraphs and repeated much of it on his podcast, reckoning with a midterm night that flipped his state upside down. He compared the scale of the Republican defeat to Watergate, the 1970s scandal that forced Richard Nixon to resign and buried the GOP in the elections that followed. He also called the Democratic wave a “blue tsunami.”
“Understandably, people were pissed off,” Cruz said, adding that Republicans “didn’t do enough to address their very real pain.”
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Then he named the reasons, and two of them land right on Trump’s agenda. “Tariffs have made everything too expensive, and the Iran war has dragged on too long,” Cruz wrote. Tariffs are taxes on imported goods, and businesses usually pass that cost down to shoppers through higher prices.
He kept going. “Food is too high, gas is too high, diesel is too high, insurance is too high, life is too high,” Ted Cruz said. “Too many Republican politicians seem like they didn’t understand or they didn’t care.”
Voters clearly felt it. NBC News exit polls found more than 80 percent of voters were worried about the cost of basics like gas, groceries, utilities and health care.
The results in Texas were historic. Democrat James Talarico won the U.S. Senate seat, ending 38 years of Republican control of it. He beat Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who knocked out Sen. John Cornyn in the Republican primary in May and had $150 million from Elon Musk behind his campaign. Cruz rallied with Paxton on the trail. Gina Hinojosa won the governor’s race, becoming the first Latina governor in Texas history and the first Democrat to hold the office in more than three decades. Vikki Goodwin unseated Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick.
That leaves Cruz, who is not up for reelection until 2030, as the only Republican still elected statewide.
Ted Cruz said he called Talarico to congratulate him. “It was a pleasant conversation, and I told him that I looked forward to working with him to try to benefit Texas,” he said. He followed that with a condition: “I will work with Democrats when they’re willing to be reasonable.”
He did not stay humble for long. Cruz promised that “Texas will be red again” and said Republicans would rebuild as a working class party built on free market conservatism, not socialism. He also insisted Texans have not suddenly turned into tofu eating, gun banning, tutu wearing liberals. “That ain’t us. Texas is still Texas,” he said.
Talarico has a different read on what happened. Appearing on CBS Mornings Wednesday, the senator elect said he wants to use his seat to get big money out of politics, overhaul campaign finance laws and limit the influence of billionaires like Musk. “The power in this state, in this country, belongs to the people and we’ve got to make sure it stays that way,” Talarico said.
Cornyn and Paxton both congratulated Talarico. Cornyn went further in an opinion piece for The Wall Street Journal, arguing Republicans forgot how to win elections and leaned into performative politics. “When Republicans force voters to choose between policy and personal character, it is unfair to them and suicidal for us,” he wrote.
