DUMFRIES, Va. — Hundreds of Virginia Republicans filled a church parking lot as the party bus turned down the long driveway.
They cheered as Sen. Ted Cruz waved from the rear deck. They laughed at all the right spots as he rallied for a local congressional candidate, mixing conservative cheerleading with biting political stand-up.
He reveled in the airlift of migrants from San Antonio, Texas, confronting liberals and “the corrupt corporate media” with a migrant crisis they ignored “until 50 showed up on Martha’s Vineyard.”
He mocked the president as senile, quipping that after Election Day, “we’re going to tell Joe Biden that it’s 2025, and he’ll just wander back to Delaware.”
And he riffed on inflation. “It’s so bad,” he said, “Hunter Biden can’t afford crack cocaine.”
Cruz has spent October on a 17-state cross-country tour, with rallies for two dozen GOP contenders for governor, Senate and House, collecting valuable chits for the next Congress or, maybe, another White House run.
He spent Thursday at rallies in Georgia with Herschel Walker, one day after a second woman accused the former Dallas Cowboys star of pressuring her to have an abortion in Dallas.
Walker wants to ban abortion nationwide without exception at 15 weeks, and the allegations have hobbled his bid to oust Sen. Raphael Warnock.
This month’s itinerary for Cruz has included stops in Iowa, where the two-term Texas Republican beat Donald Trump in the 2016 caucuses, and Nevada, which hosts another early presidential contest, plus Arizona, Ohio and Florida — enough to raise his profile without triggering alarms at Mar-a-Lago.
The stop in Dumfries, not far from the Marine base at Quantico, was a rally for Yesli Vega, a conservative firebrand whose parents emigrated from El Salvador. She’s trying to oust Rep. Abigail Spanberger, a former CIA officer and moderate Democrat, in one of the most competitive U.S. House races in the country.
“It’s a win-win,” said Kitty Van Alstyne, 67, a retired bookkeeper from Montclair, Virginia, lined up for a photo with Cruz with a hundred or so supporters when the rally had ended. “He brings big recognition to local candidates.”
“Sounds like Virginia is the latest stop as Ted Cruz tries to build that campaign bandwagon for another presidential run. ... Candidates enjoy having IOUs,” said Stephen Farnsworth, a political scientist at the University of Mary Washington who has been tracking the Vega-Spanberger race.
“What Ted Cruz offers is a connection to the base,” he added.
And if anyone can serve up red meat, it’s Cruz.
It was a crisp fall evening for the outdoor rally at Montclair Tabernacle Church in Dumfries, the stage adorned with pumpkins and straw.
Cruz’s father, an evangelical pastor who campaigned with and for him often in his bids for Senate and president, milled around before the bus arrived. He urged those on hand to “vote righteously.”
“Communism is alive and well in Washington, D.C.,” Rafael Cruz, who fled Cuba as a teen, warned the crowd in the opening speech of the rally.
“If the Marxists running the left in the country have their way, they will destroy America. If we lose this election, America will be destroyed. There will not be a 2024,” he said. “The Biden administration is doing whatever it can to destroy America. They hate America.”
Austin Rep. Chip Roy, Cruz’s first chief of staff in the Senate and, as he reminded the crowd, a native of nearby Loudoun County, Virginia, picked up the theme.
The “radical left ... wants to dismantle everything you know that is great and good about this country,” said Roy, who joined Cruz for part of the 17-state tour.
Vega then made her appeal, followed by Gov. Glenn Youngkin. He tossed basketballs into the crowd as “Spirit in the Sky” blared through the speakers, before introducing Cruz — dispelling any doubt as to who had top billing, the commonwealth’s leading Republican or the ambitious Texas senator.
“Yesli is a fireball. I listen to Yesli talk and give me the torch, the pitchfork, and let’s March to take America back,” said Cruz, invoking evangelical language to predict a red wave in the midterms. “A revival is coming,”
Theatrical
Cruz arrives at each stop on the party bus, “Truth and Courage” emblazoned on each side — the Cruz-affiliated PAC that organized the tour.
The bus deck is adorned with holiday lights, a flatscreen TV tuned to Fox News. From there, he and fellow headliners wave as the bus parks behind the stage, transforming into a backdrop for the rally and afterwards, selfies with supporters.
It’s a theatrical entrance.
Cruz has endorsed dozens of candidates and raised several million for them. For those he campaigns with in the closing weeks, he’s generated attention and bestowed a seal of approval prized in conservative circles.
As to whether these efforts also further his presidential ambitions, and tee up a run in 2024, he demurred.
“Right now my focus is on 2022 and it’s why we are spending virtually the entire month on the road, helping other candidates,” Cruz told The Dallas Morning News during an interview aboard the bus in McAllen, first stop on the tour. “I’m not on the ballot this cycle, so I could be home playing with my kids. I could be out on the golf course, although I’m a terrible golfer. There’s not a whole lot to be accomplished there. But this election, the stakes are enormous.”
Plus he said, campaigning is fun.
“I do love being out with the people,” he said. “It’s exciting. You can see people are energized.”
Whatever Cruz’s 2024 hopes, he’s waiting to see what Trump does. And he has chided other GOP hopefuls — by some counts there are two dozen — who say they’ll run no matter what.
That’s “idiotic,” Cruz told the conservative Washington Examiner. “The whole world will change depending on what Donald Trump decides.”
Still, stops in the states that host the early presidential contests do stoke speculation. They also let Cruz practice the mantra of all unannounced candidates:
“My focus right now is November 2022,” he said in New Hampshire last month while promoting House hopeful Karoline Leavitt, a former Trump aide who maintains that he won in 2020. “I love the great state of New Hampshire. I’ve spent a lot of time here. I look forward to being back.”
The emphasis along the way is on electing “conservative warriors,” not just filling seats.
“I am hopeful that we will not just win majorities in both houses, but that we will elect real conservative leaders,” he told the Morning News. “That’s what I’m working hard to try to help make happen.”
Majority leader Cruz?
This month’s bus tour started in the Rio Grande Valley, where Cruz stumped with three Latina Republicans seeking congressional seats in a region Democrats have dominated for over a century.
“The values of the Hispanic community are conservative. ... Faith, family, patriotism,” Cruz said in McAllen. “What we’ve seen is a Democratic Party who looks down on the Hispanic community, who takes us for granted, who with absolute arrogance destroys jobs, destroys families. And in South Texas, everyone here is seeing firsthand the suffering from the chaos.”
Along the route, Cruz has waded into many of the nation’s hardest-fought contests.
At an Oct. 5 rally in Queen Creek, Arizona, east of Phoenix, hundreds of supporters turned out to see Cruz stump with Kari Lake and Blake Masters, who are trying to oust Gov. Katie Hobbs and Sen. Mark Kelly, respectively.
“Let’s Go Brandon” shirts were common, alluding to a profanity aimed at Biden by NASCAR fans.
Lake expressed hope that Cruz will soon replace “that old bat” Mitch McConnell as the top Senate Republican, because “we need great leadership in Washington, D.C., especially with this bumbling fool in the White House.”
“You know what sounds really good? Senate Majority Leader Ted Cruz,” she said.
Cruz smiled.
Star attraction or turnoff
While these appearances bolster the local candidates, they’re also a showcase for Cruz.
And he is unabashed about using them to expand his own network — giving rallygoers a number to text, to subscribe to his podcast. That way, they won’t have to rely on “commie pinkos” in the news media for information, he told a crowd last week in Ohio while stumping with Senate nominee J.D. Vance.
“When you have a national figure come to a little town like Hanoverton, it’s kind of special,” the county GOP chairman told the local paper when Cruz and Vance stopped at the Spread Eagle Tavern, a onetime campaign venue for Abraham Lincoln, as Cruz reminded those on hand.
Vance’s rival also made hay out of Cruz’s foray into Ohio, though.
“Ted Cruz, an extremist right-wing conspiracy theorist, is here to boost JD,” Democrat Tim Ryan declared on Twitter, calling Cruz “the worst of the worst.”
Cruz, who rarely lets such an affront go unanswered, hit back: “Pretty shameful, Tim. ... We had massive crowds of Ohio patriots who don’t want their representatives in the pocket of Pelosi and Schumer.”
Farnsworth, the political scientist, is pretty sure Cruz inspires more votes than he costs his fellow Republicans. “Ted Cruz may be in that in that sort of political sweet spot,” he said.
In Dumfries, Virginia, Jeff Middlebrooks, 59, a retired Marine who supported Cruz in the 2016 Virginia primary — in which Cruz ran a distant third behind Trump and Sen. Marco Rubio — agreed.
“Of course he’s a turnoff to Democrats. I don’t think that makes them turn out any more, though,” he said.
“I would like to see him run again. He was my first choice in 2016,” said a woman nearby, Maria Kane, 75, a Navy retiree and former school cafeteria manager from Nokesville, Virginia.
Ron Prillaman, 75, a retired trucking manager from Woodbridge, likes Cruz because “he’s a fighter” but in 2024, he prefers Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who arranged the Martha’s Vineyard flight Cruz mentioned.
“DeSantis is a polished Trump,” he said, recalling fondly when Trump was facing down the leaders of Russia, China, North Korea and Iran. “We need our own junkyard dog.”
Biden turns 80 next month. For Prillaman, that means Cruz has another 30 or 40 years to keep trying.
“Maybe someday,” he said.
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(Gillman reported from Virginia. Jeffers reported from South Texas.)
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