Cruz Wins Support of Patrick, Former Perry Donors (Texas Lt. Gov.)

Cruz plans to announce Monday that he has secured the endorsement of Patrick, arguably the most powerful elected official in Texas and the third statewide official to back Cruz. Patrick will serve as the Texas chairman of Cruz's campaign.

The endorsement marks a reconciliation of sorts between Cruz and Patrick, both darlings of the Tea Party in Texas. In the 2012 election that sent Cruz to Washington, D.C., Patrick, then a state senator, was allied with Cruz's opponent, then-Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst.

Cruz is also expected to reveal he is beefing up his National Finance Committee with eight prominent donors to Perry, who dropped out of the presidential race last month amid fundraising problems. The new members of the committee include Dallas pipeline tycoon Kelcy Warren and fellow Dallas billionaire Darwin Deason, who together gave $11 million to a super PAC supporting Perry's 2016 run.

Other former Perry donors now backing Cruz include Deason's son Doug, Cinemark founder Lee Roy Mitchell and his wife Tandy, Dallas insurance executive Roy Bailey, Houston investor Jim Lee and Dallas tax consultant Brint Ryan. Lee and Bailey led Perry's finance team for his 2010 gubernatorial re-election campaign, while Ryan was the national finance chairman of the Opportunity and Freedom PAC, the now-defunct super PAC to which Deason and Warren contributed.

Cruz also plans to name Railroad Commissioner Ryan Sitton a Texas co-chair of his campaign. Sitton will join fellow commissioner David Porter, who announced last week he was signing up with Cruz's campaign as its first Texas co-chair.

The list of endorsements continues to solidify Cruz's home-field advantage, and it comes as a GOP rival with deep Texas ties, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, convenes his family and top donors in Houston to chart a path forward for his struggling campaign. In addition to the three statewide elected officials, Cruz claims the support of more than third of the Republicans in the Texas Legislature and about a quarter of the GOP members of the state's congressional delegation.

Cruz is scheduled to announce the endorsements Monday morning at a news conference at his campaign headquarters in Houston.

Playing the long game...

Pray that this game is not predicated in large part on a slippage and collapse of The Donald. The Donald is still the Big Dawg in this race, and he is clearly on the hunt, seems to be getting better at it all the time, what with the shift downward in his negatives.

But this is politics, and never say never. The Donald may simply step aside at the Republican National Convention, and throw the floor open (there are just three chances of that happening, and they are, respectively, “fat, “slim”, and “none”)

This “winner take all”, rather than a proportional vote in the early primaries, kind of throws the whole prediction thing into turmoil. The Donald may not necessarily roll up enough committed votes for a first-ballot win at the convention, but he can seriously control who else is even going to be on the short list.

More importantly, who is going to be considered for Vice-President. True, it is a largely ceremonial post, and probably has little to do with winning the home state of the selected individual, but it announces to the world how much consideration went into determining just who the Presidential candidate is going to consider to be his voting base.

The Donald has what appears to be a WIDE support from non-Republican voters, even among those of whom are rarely if ever considered to be potential crossover or serious ticket-splitter voters.

Ted Cruz has unquestioned support of a broad spectrum of the right-leaning Republicans, even if he does not budge the needle at all among the Establishment Republicans. But then, The Donald does not have much support from “conservative” factions, or the Establishment Republicans either, and still his support, while it may fluctuate, is of long standing and does not look likely to go away.

Cruz is astute. He knows his chances. If he cannot win, he can have a national platform to move the Republican Party in a direction towards conservatism again.

He said he was pleased that Trump entered the race and I believe that’s true. Trump is raising issues and moving the party as well. The establishment is being pressured and that is making Ted Cruz very happy.

Me too. You as well, no doubt and most everyone here at FR.

Governor Abbott ought to do the same thing.

Soon enough!

When Gov. Abbott was the Attorney General of Texas, he hired Ted Cruz for solicitor general of Texas even though Ted Cruz was 31 at the time, the youngest state solicitor general.

They worked together to find cases to defend our Conservative values in front of the Supreme Court.

Successfully defended the constitutionality of the Texas Ten Commandments monument, winning a 5-4 landmark decision before the U.S. Supreme Court, setting an important national precedent for the right to display similar monuments.
Led 31 states in District of Columbia v. Heller where the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a ban on firearms in a 5-4 landmark decision.
Fought and won a landmark ruling for U.S. sovereignty in Medellin v. Texas at the U.S. Supreme Court against 90 foreign nations and the President to ensure the supremacy of U.S. legal system against encroachment by international treaties and rulings of the “World Court.”

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