Ex-spokesman says for Texas, Ted Cruz is a moderate

A former spokesman for Sen. Ted Cruz says the conservative Republican is a moderate by the standards of his home state of Texas.

“Some people say that Ted is far right or ultra-right. That would be true if Ted were running for city council in New York or mayor of San Francisco, but he’s not,” Rick Tyler told MSNBC’s Katy Tur on Wednesday. “He’s running for the U.S. Senate in Texas. He is right in the middle. So I think he’s pretty strong for the election in Texas.”

Cruz won 85 percent of the vote in the Republican primary on Tuesday. Rep. Beto O’Rourke took more than 60 percent of the vote in the Democratic primary to challenge him in November.

On Tuesday night after his GOP victory, Cruz promptly released a radio jingle attacking O’Rourke.

{mosads}

“If you’re gonna run in Texas, you can’t be a liberal, man, ’cause liberal thought is not the spirit of a Lone Star man,” the song goes. 

Tyler said that Cruz is a “moderate Texan” and echoed the point Cruz made on Wednesday that it’s hard for Democrats to win in Texas.

“There is no doubt the extreme left, right now, is energized. They are angry; they hate the president. We’re seeing that in the fundraising numbers for Democrats all across the country; we’re seeing that in turnout,” Cruz said on CNN Wednesday morning.

GOP Sen. Ted Cruz reflects on the Democratic turnout in his state’s primary election: “Every two years, every four years, Texas is always fixin’ to turn blue … in Texas, at least, there are a lot more conservatives than there are liberals” https://t.co/ggf3HwFU3M

— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) March 7, 2018

While Cruz has said he is taking the race against O’Rourke seriously, he believes Texas will continue to back Republicans and said he was only reassured by the Republican turnout for Tuesday night’s primaries.

“That being said, in Texas last night, we had a strong turnout for conservatives. It was really encouraging,” Cruz said.

Tyler was fired from Cruz’s 2016 presidential campaign over his adversarial tactics against fellow Republicans running for president, including tweeting out a video misquoting Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.).