Ted Cruz Extends His Reign of Terror for a 3rd Term

Texas voters have reelected Ted Cruz, their part-time U.S. Senator and full-time mediocre, edge-lord podcaster. Cruz handily triumphed over Rep. Colin Allred (D-Texas) after weeks of neck-and-neck polling and what one Texas-based political scientist described to Jezebel in October as “the fight of [Cruz’s] political career.”

Speaking to his supporters after his victory on Tuesday night, Cruz smugly thanked Democrats. “I want to say, thank you, [New York Sen. Chuck Schumer],” he said. “And I hope we win a few more Senate seats tonight because you wasted so much money in Texas.”

It was a hard-fought battle, but, at the end of the day, almost everything was stacked against Allred from the start. A Democrat hasn’t won state-wide in Texas since 1994. As widely detested as Cruz may be, among both his Senate colleagues and his own constituents, he’s still an incumbent Republican running in a heavily voter-suppressed, Republican stronghold.

Allred did seemingly have one advantage, which he fully wielded. The rising Democratic Party star ran aggressively on the devastating impacts of Texas’ total abortion ban, which has seen dozens of women come forward with harrowing stories of almost dying from being denied life-saving care under the state’s ban. And, as Allred repeatedly pointed out, Cruz famously called Texas’ abortion laws “perfectly reasonable,” voted to confirm dozens of anti-abortion extremists to the federal judiciary, and, for years, unapologetically campaigned on anti-abortion extremism—until doing so became politically inconvenient, due to the deep unpopularity of abortion bans.

Over the last year, Cruz has repeatedly dodged questions about his own state’s abortion laws. Last year, he physically ran away when a reporter asked him about a Texas woman who was denied an emergency abortion by the state Supreme Court. He also ghosted every Texas newspaper that asked him for his position on a national abortion ban. In June, he played hooky at a Senate hearing on the impacts of Texas’ abortion ban, where one of his constituents testified about being forced to travel to Colorado for a life-saving abortion procedure, prompting the woman, Lauren Miller, to question whether Cruz was “too busy podcasting.”

Welp, six more years of plenty more podcast-related absences and anti-abortion bullshit from this man.