The race for a U.S. Senate seat in Texas is tightening as we barrel toward Election Day. Both Republican Sen. Ted Cruz and Democratic Rep. Colin Allred spent the contest’s first and only debate on Tuesday looking for any advantage against their opponents. In the end, Allred landed the most stunning blow, when the moderators asked Cruz whether he supports former President Donald Trump’s pledge to pardon Jan. 6 rioters.
Ducking a direct answer, Cruz said that anyone who attacks a police officer should be punished before pivoting to talking about Allred’s stance on criminal justice. Allred was having none of it. “You can’t be for the mob on Jan. 6 and for the officers,” he pointed out. As Cruz began to chuckle in bemusement, Allred shot back: “It’s not funny.” The pummeling continued as Allred reminded viewers where both men were that day:
I took off my suit jacket and I was prepared to defend the House floor from the mob. At the same time, after going around the country lying about the election, after he’d been the architect of the attempt to overthrow that election, when that mob came, Sen. Cruz was hiding in a supply closet. And that’s OK — I don’t want him to get hurt by the mob; I really don’t.
It might at first seem like “architect” is an overinflated title to assign Cruz in this case. His name has been mostly absent from the many retellings of Trump’s plot to steal the election from Joe Biden. But when you consider Cruz’s actions and rhetoric before, during and after the attack, it’s hard to dispute Allred’s line of thinking.
When you consider Cruz’s actions and rhetoric before, during and after the attack, it’s hard to dispute Allred’s line of thinking.
After Biden’s win, Cruz carefully avoided spreading the wildest of the postelection conspiracy theories. Rather than point to imagined suitcases of ballots or hacked voting machines, he was intentionally vague about exactly what sort of irregularities had supposedly blocked Trump’s win. Instead, Cruz insisted that skepticism about the results was necessary because “the allegations of fraud and irregularities in the 2020 election exceed any in our lifetimes” — without noting that Trump and his supporters were the primary sources of those allegations.
In the days before Congress met to certify Biden’s win, Cruz announced that he would join with House Republicans who were set on objecting to the electoral votes from key swing states. Claiming “deep distrust” of the election’s results, Cruz and 10 other GOP senators suggested Congress empower “an Electoral Commission, with full investigatory and fact-finding authority, to conduct an emergency 10-day audit of the election returns in the disputed states.” The results would then go to those states, which could “convene a special legislative session to certify a change in their vote, if needed.”
As Cruz was making his case, lawyers close to Trump were insisting that Vice President Mike Pence could do essentially the same thing on his own. Trump’s allies had already arranged for fake electoral certificates to be signed and sent to Congress and the National Archives. Pence was under pressure to use those fake votes as a pretext to send the matter back to GOP-controlled state legislatures, which would then throw the race to Trump.
The difference between the two schemes is that while the former was dismissed as a legal fantasy, Cruz’s suggestion cobbled together enough historical precedent to create a veneer of plausibility. At the time, I believed that the senator was cynically throwing an impossible Hail Mary to pick up points with the far right. But last year, MSNBC reported on a recording between Cruz and Fox’s host Maria Bartiromo that indicates he was more serious than I’d thought. When asked whether he thought there’s “any chance you can overturn this,” Cruz responded: “I hope so.”
It’s incredibly damning that Cruz was all for Trump’s power grab, granting the vaguest of the president’s lies a legalistic patina. It was a win-win for him at the time: Either he’d persuade a majority of Congress to reject Biden’s win or win points with MAGA for running headfirst into the wall. Then Trump incited a mob to breach the Capitol’s doors, and Cruz’s carefully laid plans went sideways. Cruz has been able to mostly slip under the radar when it comes to Jan. 6 Tellingly, Cruz still went ahead with his objections to Arizona’s and Pennsylvania’s electoral votes after the mob had been cleared from the building. After riding out the initial wave of criticism and calls for his resignation and writing a book to half-heartedly claim Trump was right to question the election results, he has pivoted in more way than one to win re-election. That has included a rebrand to overwrite years of partisan bombast with a new “moderate” persona. It’s another smart choice on his part, since it became clear in 2022 that election denialism was a real political loser in battleground states and districts. The most vocal supporters of Trump’s lies lost key races for secretary of state, the Senate and governor in a firm rebuke from voters. Cruz has been able to mostly slip under the radar when it comes to Jan. 6, as the focus has been on Trump and his inner circle of cronies and co-conspirators. That’s why it’s so important that Allred, when given the chance, pointed the spotlight squarely on Cruz’s role in trying to toss out millions of Americans’ votes. “This election is his accountability,” Allred told Texans watching on Tuesday night. “You don’t just get to be patriotic when your side wins.” It might not wind up being the deciding factor he needs to block a third term for Cruz. But given that Cruz has indicated that he might challenge another Trump loss if he returns to the Senate in January, I hope Texans heed Allred’s warning: “He’s done it once. He’ll do it again.”
Hayes Brown is a writer and editor for MS NOW. He focuses on politics and policymaking at the federal level, including Congress and the White House. 
