Texas Democrat: I’m ‘very likely’ to run against Cruz

Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-Texas) expects to challenge Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) for his Senate seat in 2018, the Texas Tribune reported. 

“It’s very likely that I will run for Senate in 2018,” the 44-year-old El Paso representative told the outlet.

O’Rourke added that he feels “encouraged” by the feedback he’s received as he considers a bid.

{mosads}While Cruz has enjoyed conservative darling status since he joined the Senate after the 2012 election, rumblings about a potential Senate challenge have grown louder on both the left and the right since Cruz dropped out of the 2016 presidential race. 

Democrats have long eyed Texas’s growing Hispanic population as proof that the state could turn blue one day — but that optimism has never come to fruition. The party targeted Texas’s 2014 race for governor, but Republicans cruised to an easy victory. 

Many conservatives bristled at Cruz’s decision not to endorse then-GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump during his speech at the Republican National Convention, a decision that drew boos from the convention hall. The next morning, a handful of members of his home state’s convention delegation angrily confronted Cruz about the decision in a tense scene that led to verbal confrontations between convention delegates in the rooms outside of Cruz’s speech. 

Cruz eventually endorsed Trump and held a rally with his vice presidential nominee, Mike Pence.

Rep. Michael McCaul, a Texas Republican who backed Trump and was considered as a potential Department of Homeland Security nominee, has blasted Cruz for his late endorsement and has floated a primary challenge of his own.

And Matthew Dowd, a former aide to President George W. Bush, told the Tribune earlier Thursday that he’s thinking about mounting an independent challenge. 

Cruz, who toppled the establishment favorite for Senate during his 2012 bid and won easily in the general election, told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt earlier this week that he doesn’t “expect” a primary challenger. Still, Cruz added that he will “assume the threat is serious and prepare accordingly.”