Posted on 08/28/2013 4:11:39 AM PDT by Servant of the Cross
Senator Ted Cruzs father is a conservative force.
The political partnership between Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and his father, Rafael, is a rising force in conservative politics. To most observers, it seems like part of a familial game plan that has been in the works for years.
But according to Senator Cruz, it actually began quite recently with a phone call. My dad poured himself into my Senate race last year, he recalls. In the early months, we didnt have much of a campaign. One day, I couldnt make an event, so he drove out to West Texas alone no staffers, nothing and he spoke on my behalf. A few hours later, I called and asked how it went. He said, Even surrogates for the other candidates were asking for Cruz yard signs.
Ever since, Cruz has kept his father, a 74-year-old pastor, involved with his political shop, using him not merely as a confidant and stand-in, but as a special envoy. He is Cruzs preferred introductory speaker, his best messenger with evangelicals, and his favorite on-air sidekick a presence who softens his edge. This past Sunday, the pair sat for a joint CNN interview, one full of aw-shucks asides.
This summer, father and son have also been traveling together throughout the country, speaking to conservatives in Iowa and elsewhere. Their roadshow has enthralled many on the right and startled Cruzs potential 2016 rivals. No one else in the emerging GOP field has an ally like the charismatic elder Cruz.
There Rafael Cruz was in Des Moines, Iowa, last month, speaking to ministers at the Marriott hotel and collecting business cards in the lobby; a month later, he was in Ames, Iowa, pacing the stage at a conservative summit and drawing cheers for his broadsides against President Obama. His fiery speech at a FreedomWorks event in July drew heavy praise from talk radio.
Rush Limbaugh especially loved how Rafael Cruz compared the presidents hope and change message to Fidel Castros appeal decades ago. This guy is knocking it out of the park! Limbaugh exclaimed.
Conservative leaders agree. Bob Vander Plaats, a top Iowa conservative who hosted the Cruz duo last month, calls Rafael Cruzs speeches inspiring and says the image of a father and son laboring together resonates with values voters. Former senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina, who now runs the Heritage Foundation, is another admirer. He has worked alongside Rafael Cruz this month to rally against Obamacare.
Rafael actually called me and volunteered to contribute to Heritages defund Obamacare tour, and it has been amazing to be with him, DeMint says. He opens with a prayer, which gets as much applause as anything else, and then he gives a call to action, talking about how his freedom was taken away in Cuba and how important it is that we never lose our freedom here.
As part of that tour, Rafael Cruz attended his sons town-hall meetings in Texas last week, where he called out the Republican establishment for not backing a fall standoff over Obamacares funding. There is a great disconnect between promises and action, he told a Dallas crowd, not far from his home in Carrollton. If theres one thing Im proud of about my son, its that hes doing exactly what he told each and every one of you that hed do.
Attendees there went wild for him, loving his punchy, often politically incorrect rhetoric. They leapt to their feet as he closed his remarks and a soaring rock track began to play. A minute later, Senator Cruz emerged from backstage and strolled toward the dais with his arms open. Father and son embraced as fists pumped. Another episode of Cruz-apalooza had begun.
Beyond his oratory, though, its Rafael Cruzs sway in his sons inner circle that makes him a power broker. His son trusts his fathers political instincts, and instead of hiring a big-name Republican strategist to shepherd his ascent, he uses his father for the kind of guidance youd expect from a consultant.
Rafael Cruz has already taken five trips to Washington, D.C., this year, usually spending a week each time. He stays at his sons apartment, and while his son is on Capitol Hill, he hosts meetings and catches up with Cruz-friendly activists and donors. In the evenings, he and his son talk politics deep into the night.
When the Senate is out of session and they hit the road, Rafael Cruz arrives at events in advance of his sons team, informally scouting the room and huddling with organizers. He relishes the game warming up local Republicans, shaking hands, and regaling them with stories about his son. Later on, hell call the busy freshman senator and give him a preview of the scene.
Sources close to Cruz say those who run Cruzs operation, both in his Senate office and on the political side, have learned to work with Rafael, and that for many of them, their bosss father has become a mentor. They also appreciate his tact: Hes clearly the insider of insiders within Cruzs camp, but he doesnt overdo it, leaving the mechanics of Cruz, Inc., to aides such as his campaign adviser Jason Johnson, or his chief of staff, Chip Roy.
Rafael Cruz does not take his arrival in the heart of the conservative movements upper echelon for granted. He may project confidence and verve when hes in front of a tea-party audience, but, he tells me, he wept when his son took his oath, and every day he says a prayer of thanks that he and his son can work together at the national level.
Whereas his sons biography is a straightforward narrative of a child prodigy turned senator Princeton, Harvard Law, Supreme Court clerk, and Texas solicitor general Rafael Cruzs life has been far more complicated.
Born in Matanzas, Cuba, he grew up in the Cuban middle class in the 1950s, as the son of an RCA salesman and an elementary-school teacher. As a teenager, he grew to detest the regime of Fulgencio Batista. He and some of his schoolmates frequently clashed with Batistas officials. Eventually, he linked up with Castros guerrilla groups and supported their attempts to overthrow Batista.
Its a decision he still regrets. His move toward Castro, he explains, was mostly due to his anger with Batistas government, which at one point imprisoned him and tortured him for his work with the revolutionaries. He says he never shared Castros Communism, but, at the time, it was the best way to fight Batistas oppression. By age 18, in 1957, he knew he needed to get out, and a friend essentially bribed an official to secure him an exit permit.
Soon after, with his parents still in Cuba they wouldnt come to the U.S. until 1966 Rafael Cruz arrived in Austin, Texas, where he began to study mathematics and chemical engineering at the University of Texas. He had little more than $100 to his name, and he could barely speak English. But, by working seven days a week, he was able to graduate in 1961.
In the early 1960s, Rafael Cruz was also beginning to start a family. He married and had two daughters, and he started to work in the energy industry. But the marriage ended after only a few years, and Cruz found himself at a difficult crossroads in his late twenties. (One of his daughters is now a physician in Texas; the other is deceased.)
Cruz decided to move to New Orleans to take a new job, which is where he met his second wife, Eleanor Darragh, a computer programmer from Delaware, who was also working for an oil company. They married, moved to Calgary, Alberta, and in late 1970 had their first and only child, Rafael Edward Cruz.
They werent in Canada long, choosing to move to Houston, where they continued to work for oil companies. He became a Canadian citizen while working there, he says, but it never felt like home. Back in Texas, he became a permanent legal resident, and it wasnt until 2005 that he formally became a U.S. citizen. Oh, I know I should have done it sooner, he says. I love this country so much, but you cannot change the past.
It was also back in Texas, in 1975, when his life changed. After attending a Bible-study meeting with a colleague, he became a born-again Christian, leaving his days as a non-practicing Roman Catholic behind.
The people at the Bible study had a peace that I could not understand, this peace in the midst of trouble, Cruz says. I knew I needed to find that peace by finding Jesus Christ. His son and wife followed him, becoming born-again Christians as well. Around the dinner table, the talk was almost always about the Bible or the latest happenings in the Reagan administration.
His faith, he says, also saved him from becoming bitter and depressed when the oil industry sagged in the mid 1980s and his professional life hit a low point. There was a big crash and many of my clients went bankrupt, he says. It got so bad that I had to close my business. I became a salesman here and there, and I started to build a ministry, as a sort of traveling preacher.
As Rafael developed his own extemporaneous speaking style, he shared his methods with his son, who was a star student by middle school. But instead of pushing him toward preaching, Rafael wanted Ted to have a ministers confidence and cadence as a debater. He repeatedly quizzed Ted on the Constitution until he memorized it, and critiqued his enunciation.
Cruzs mother, Rafael chuckles, played more of a good-cop role. Though they are now divorced, he says his son has a similarly close relationship with her, just without the political element. I live outside Dallas, but she lives in the same high-rise condo complex as him in Houston, he says. She loves taking the elevator to see her granddaughters, and he appreciates that.
As for our relationship, I coached him, yes, but it was a close relationship in all respects, Cruz says. We used to go sailing together on vacations, and wed talk and talk. After he was at Princeton, he was on the debate team, and Id go every time I could when he was winning all of these debates. I did the same thing when he argued before the Supreme Court.
The dynamic of their relationship hasnt changed much; it has adapted. Back in January, soon after his son was sworn in, Rafael followed Ted as he made the cable-news rounds in Washington, D.C. At the time, few of the producers working for CNBC or Fox News even knew who he was, other than an older gentleman with wisps of snow-white hair, standing in the back near the cameras.
One chilly January night, moments before an interview at a cramped studio on North Capitol Street, a technician asked Rafael Cruz to step away from the cables. Most guests of guests, he reminded him, stay in the green room. Senator Cruz, standing under the bright lights nearby, heard the exchange and said, Thats my father. The technician nodded, and Rafael Cruz, as ever, stood firm in the shadows, watching.
Video of Rafael Cruz ... knocking it out of the park.
A great article on Father and Son. There is so much misinformation out there regarding both of them since Ted Cruz scares the hell out of the libs.
Viva Senator Cruz. Perhaps he may just be destined for the highest office of the greatest country in the world, the last bastion of freedom in the world. Only in America.
Ted said to Glenn that he wasn't worried so much about what Glenn thought, he is most worried about what his father thinks of how Ted lives his life.
How ironic that what some might think as a Cruz liability (his father's birth in Cuba) becomes one of his greatest strengths!
Ted and Rafael Cruz ping.
Rafael Cruz truth ping.
...yep, the irony that father Cruz will be the strength of his rise, however far he goes, is delicious....
I love irony! It’s so ...... ironic.
God seems to love irony too!
Good article! Cruz is the Real Deal!
Let us have the first ‘hispanic’ president before we have the first female president.
PS: His mother’s parents were of Irish and Italian roots. The whole family is brilliant!
Thanks for this post. Yes, let's include background on the mother of Ted Cruz too ... who passed to him "U.S. citizen at birth status" ...
The whole family is brilliant!
And as American, in our distinct "melting pot" way, as apple pie!
When Senator Cruz becomes President, the next Governor of Texas should appoint his dad to the vacancy.
Newsflash: in 1957 you didn’t need an “exit permit” to leave Cuba. Despite the Batista “dictatorship” Cuba was a free country in which people could come and go as they please. In 1957 it was common for middle-class Cubans to take a ferry to Florida for a day of shopping. There were also opposition parties and a free press - including a communist newspaper that had its own radio station.
The information about Cruz’s alleged arrest, etc. has never been verified in any way, shape or form. We scream and yell about lack of proof in Obama’s biography, and yet we are not applying the same standard to the Cruz legend. And I mean legend as a collorary of Moscow Rules.
I like Cruz, but I don’t like the lies he is telling - or allowing to be told - about his father. Rubio did the same thing.
Still a lot of misinformation/disinformation about Rafael Cruz.
Newsflash: in 1957 you didnt need an exit permit to leave Cuba. Despite the Batista dictatorship Cuba was a free country in which people could come and go as they please. In 1957 it was common for middle-class Cubans to take a ferry to Florida for a day of shopping. There were also opposition parties and a free press - including a communist newspaper that had its own radio station.
The information about Cruzs alleged arrest, etc. has never been verified in any way, shape or form. We scream and yell about lack of proof in Obamas biography, and yet we are not applying the same standard to the Cruz legend. And I mean legend as a collorary of Moscow Rules.
I like Cruz, but I dont like the lies he is telling - or allowing to be told - about his father. Rubio did the same thing.
Neither has it been DISproven in any way, shape or form.
Newsflash: in 2013 on FR, it is not considered good form to denigrate a true conservative patriot in every sense of the word (Rafael Cruz), by making unsubstantiated allegations about him or his son and wrongly calling them both 'liars'.
Who's really telling a lie?
Kab, have you stopped beating your wife and surfing internet porn yet? There has never been any verification that you have. Until then, I'm assuming status quo..........
Now, do you understand the absurdity on your part that I demonstrated by being absurd? Do you think records from the last 24 months of the Batista regime are in order? I'm sure the transition to Castro was peaceful and orderly...and I'm sure in the final death throws of Batista he was understanding to the anti Batista protesters.......GET A CLUE DUDE...
Cruz has openly said that he got a permit from the Batista regime in Cuba to come to the US. He also said that he fought on Castro’s side prior to that in the early phase of that revolution when he was a teenager. He said he didn’t know Castro was a communist.
But, John F Kennedy also said he was fooled by Castro.
The elder Cruz came to the US, attended college, got married, had kids.
I don’t think there’s anything hidden. The only problem really is that Cruz wasn’t “famous” until recently and no one worried about who his parents were.
And he admitted that in hindsight our policy with the brutal regime of the Batista dictatorship was completely wrong.
Again, that is a lie, because no one needed a “permit” or “visa” to leave Cuba during the Batista presidency.
And again, nobody in Cuba didn’t know that Castro was a terrorist. He led an armed insurrection in 1953, had a public and highly publicized trial, and was sentenced to prison.
The U.S. ambassador to Cuba during the Eisenhower administration (that was before JFK) warned the president that Castro was a red. His reward for that was getting removed from his post.
None of the information about Rafael Cruz’s activities in Cuba has ever been verified in any way - so it seems to me that the one getting fooled is Y O U.
He says he had a permit stamp on his passport.
How do you know they didn’t have such a stamp?
PLease post the biography or historical data that proves the elder Cruz wrong about his own history.
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