Ted Cruz recommits to 2024 Senate run

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz told supporters on a call that he will be running for reelection in 2024 and will not seek the Republican nomination for president, his office confirmed on Tuesday.

“I’m on the ballot in 2024,” Ted Cruz said on Monday night, according to the Houston Chronicle. “I’m running for re-election.” 

No Democrat has jumped in the race yet. 

Cruz has made similar comments before about the 2024 presidential race, including telling Margaret Brennan on “Face the Nation” that there is “a reason I’m in Texas today. I’m not in Iowa, I’m in Texas, and I’m fighting for 30 million Texans.”

Cruz said Monday night that he was focused on the Senate seat in 2024 “so we keep Texas red.”

In 2018, Democrat Beto O’Rourke came within three points of Cruz, and the Texas Democrats flipped two Congressional seats and 12 Texas House seats, slicing the GOP’s majority from 40 seats to 16 in that chamber.  O’Rourke proved to be a fundraising powerhouse, raising what was then a record $80 million, the most expensive Senate race in history at the time. 

The victories led both statewide and national Democrats to salivate over flipping Texas. But the gains were not as long-lived as Democrats hoped, with both Sen. John Cornyn and former President Donald Trump winning the state in 2020, and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott trouncing O’Rourke in the 2022 race by 10 points. 

Although Democrats gained a seat in the U.S. Senate in 2022, the 2024 map looks brutal for them. Of the 34 states that are up, the closest two Republican races in 2018 were in Texas and Florida, where Gov. Ron DeSantis recently won reelection by nearly 20 points. 

Several other high-profile senators, including Josh Hawley of Missouri, Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Rick Scott of Florida, are all up in 2024 and have said they won’t be running for president. 

So far, the only Republicans who have announced presidential runs in 2024 are Trump and former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley, who announced her bid on Tuesday.