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Government

How Ted Cruz’s Dad Became a GOP Rock Star

To really understand Texas' Tea-Partying junior senator, you need to spend a few days with his father, Rafael.
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“One of the things that we need to understand is something fundamental in Marxism,” he says. “You must destroy the concept of God because government must become your god.”


When Cruz got back to Texas, he resolved never to return to Cuba. When he reaches this part of the story, he normally tells people that he was “grateful to be in the land of the free and the home of the brave.” 


While he was in graduate school in the early ’60s (also in mathematics, also at UT), he took a two-week seminar on computer programming. The university had just purchased its first computer, and Cruz would write programs, for hire, for professors and grad students who wanted to run data analysis. One project analyzed Rorschach tests. 


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After school he got a job with IBM in Dallas. He was transferred to Houston and worked with a consulting firm in the oil industry. He doesn’t talk much about this part of his life. He was briefly married to a woman before Ted’s mother, and had two girls whose names almost never come up in public. (One is a doctor; the other is deceased.) He was 29 or 30—he can’t remember his exact age—when he married Eleanor Darragh. A mathematician like Rafael and the first in her family to graduate from college, Eleanor was a computer programmer for Shell. Eventually, the couple started their own seismic data-processing firm and followed the oil industry to Calgary. She spent a lot of time crunching numbers. He spent a lot of time out selling, socializing with clients.


Rafael Edward Cruz was born in 1970, three days before Christmas. They decided to call him Ted. Because they were living in Canada, he was born in a socialist hospital. The elder Cruz doesn’t recall any specific complaints, but he remembers paying either $100 or $300 extra so they could use the doctor of their choice.



•••



When Ted was 8 or 9 months old, the family took a trip to a hot springs. Rafael’s parents were there, too. At one point, while Rafael and Eleanor were in a pool, Rafael’s father picked up baby Ted and threw him into the water. The infant began to sink. Eleanor was very upset—the incident would remain a source of tension for years. But then Ted popped back up, smiling and giggling. “He was just as happy as can be,” Rafael says.


This is how the father thinks of his son. When faced with opposition or difficulty, whether it was the Ivy League debaters at Princeton, the opposing attorneys arguing before the Supreme Court, or someone like Dianne Feinstein on the Senate floor, Ted stays calm, rational. “He’s really at peace,” Rafael says. “The Bible calls it ‘a peace that surpasses all understanding.’  ” 


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When Ted was still a toddler, Rafael and Eleanor split up. Rafael moved back to Houston by himself. Even when Eleanor brought Ted six months later, the family remained estranged. But a friend invited Rafael to a Baptist church in Spring Branch. There, he dedicated his life to Christ and soon moved back in with his wife and son. Ted wouldn’t hear the details of the separation until he was much older. At the time, all he saw was a father going to church and a family back together. If not for Rafael’s newfound faith, Ted has told people, “I would’ve been raised by a single mother.”


Rafael started reading his son stories from the Bible and noticed that Ted seemed much brighter than other children his age. It felt like he was anointed. There was a time when young Ted told people he wanted to be a scientist. Later it changed to a lawyer. Rafael remembers telling him more than once: “Ted, you have been gifted above any man that I know, and God has destined you for greatness.” 


For his first 20 years in this country, Rafael didn’t follow politics much. He focused on business, on family, and on his faith. But by the late 1970s, he was growing more and more worried about the dreadful economy under Jimmy Carter. There was stagflation, unemployment, gas shortages. It was an especially bad time for people in the oil industry. Rafael got involved with the Religious Roundtable, a mirror group to the Moral Majority that Jerry Falwell was starting around the same time. He was on the state board, part of the movement that mobilized evangelicals in 1980 to help elect Ronald Reagan. (He calls Reagan “the greatest president this country has had in the last hundred years.”)


At the time, Ted was 8, 9, 10 years old. Every night, discussion over dinner was about Republican politics, about family values and the power of an unbridled economy. Over and over, the father would tell his son: “You know, Ted, when I lost my freedom in Cuba, I had a place to come to. If we lose our freedoms here, where are we going to go? There is no place to go.” It’s a line both men still use in speeches.


Through a client, Rafael got Ted involved with the Free Enterprise Institute. Before he was in high school, Ted was reading Austrian economic theories and open-market philosophies. When he talks about it, Rafael always lists the influences in the same order: Friedman, Hayek, Bastiat, Mises, the Federalist Papers, the Anti-Federalist Papers. The institute also organized a group of five teenagers called the Constitutional Corroborators. Ted and the other boys committed the Constitution to memory. Rafael would quiz his son until he had every word perfect. Then he’d critique his elocution. 


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The kids toured Texas, going to Rotary Club meetings and luncheons hosted by like-minded groups. At each stop, they would set up five easels in the front of the room, and while the adults were having lunch or dinner, the boys would each write out a different part of the Constitution from memory. (Ted’s favorite parts were: Article I, Section 8 and the Ninth and 10th amendments.) Then Ted would give a short speech about the founding documents or about a free economy. Ted did this 80 times throughout high school. Rafael knows it was 80 because each time Ted gave one of these performances, he got a $50 scholarship, and at the end of the four years, there was $4,000 in that account.


“Before he left high school, he knew without a shadow of a doubt what his purpose in life was,” Rafael says. “It was to defend and protect freedom and the Constitution, to fight for free markets and limited government and free enterprise and the rule of law.” He adds, “It became like fire in his bones.”


When Ted went to college, his parents divorced. When the topic comes up, the usually loquacious Rafael leaves long pauses in the conversation. He regrets it. “Divorce is always a sad thing,” he says. “It’s not one of the things I’m proud of. Sometimes we make decisions that we regret later on.”


He says that he and Eleanor have a good relationship now. With Ted’s career and the grandkids, there’s plenty to talk about. Every time he’s in Houston, they have dinner. (She lives in the same condo building as Ted and his family.)


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Rafael says Ted didn’t take a side in the split. He was grown by then, and after years in debate, Rafael says, Ted was accustomed to seeing both sides of any argument. Instead he focused even more intensely on his debate competitions, winning the top awards at several national and international debate tournaments. Rafael makes a point of noting that despite the troubles he was going through with Ted’s mom, they were both there for their son’s shining moments, for the big debate tournaments, for his graduation from Princeton, for his graduation from Harvard Law School.


As Ted went on to clerk for U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist, to work in a private practice, to work on landmark cases like Bush v. Gore, Rafael got out of the oil business and into pastoring and translating religious texts. He settled in the suburbs of Dallas because there’s less traffic than Houston and he enjoys being close to the airport. 


Rafael started driving from town to town, stumping for Ted, during the 2012 campaign. Crowds loved him, and soon father and son were sharing their story—together and apart—with anyone who’d listen. The father was there in Washington, D.C., that day in January 2013 when the American dream became a reality and he watched his son sworn in
as a United States senator. He doesn’t cry often, but that day, seeing his son hold the Bible and raise his hand to take the oath, Rafael wept.



•••



Life on the road is strange. The night of the Eagle Forum event at the country club in Conroe, Rafael tells a shortened version of his story. The crowd cheers when he talks about becoming a Texan. They applaud when he mentions Ronald Reagan and learning English, when he refers to this country as “the greatest bastion of freedom in the world” and talks about the need to “draw a line in the sand.” When he’s done, he receives another standing ovation and a plaque. Someone in the audience declares he “must be the proudest dad in America.”


Dozens of people line up to meet him, to ask for a photo or an autograph. He signs programs and pictures and several pocket-size Constitutions. The procession lasts nearly an hour. Waiting around for him through all of it is a pleasant couple, Judy and Tom Hughes. While traveling, Rafael generally prefers the comfort of a home to the lonely sterility of a hotel room. So organizations that host him often arrange for him to stay in guest rooms. Tonight, he’s staying with Tom and Judy, in their palatial two-story house a few miles away, in The Woodlands. They stand a few feet from him, smiling like they’ve won the lottery.


By 8 am the next morning, Rafael is up and dressed in another crisp suit. Today, he’ll go back to the same country club from last night to talk to a group of pastors over brunch. He’s passionate about convincing religious leaders to get more political, so he’s been looking forward to this. He has a PowerPoint presentation prepared. (His phone is the size of an Etch A Sketch, and he still uses an AOL email account, but he is considerably more tech-savvy than most septuagenarians.) 


Tom has already left for work in the city by the time Rafael comes downstairs, but Judy is there, ready with pictures and stories of her children and her baby granddaughter. Rafael notes the beautiful morning light streaming in from the tall windows in the living room.


“From the east,” he says to nobody in particular. “The way Jesus will return.”


They make small talk for a while. When the topic of President Obama comes up, Judy mentions that a lot of people think he’s the Antichrist. She wants to know what the pastor thinks.


“He’s not the Antichrist,” Rafael says. “People thought Hitler was the Antichrist, too, but we’re all still here, so he couldn’t have been. Obama is just very passionate about his beliefs. I think his philosophies are terrible for this country, but he’s not the Antichrist. He’s a true believer.”


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A few minutes later, Judy wants to show her guest one of the gigantic lemons she grows in her garden. She disappears for a moment and returns with a lemon the size of a small football. Upon seeing it, Cruz recalls a simple lemon dessert recipe and suggests cutting thin slices of the rind to put in the garbage disposal for a lemon-fresh scent around the sink. Then he explains that he doesn’t eat a lot of sweets these days. There are pastries out for breakfast, but he says he’s waiting for the brunch.


“I don’t do push-ups. I do push-aways,” he says, pushing an imaginary plate away from his chest.


Because of his travel schedule, he doesn’t  exercise as much as he’d like. His usual routine involves long, intense walks. Not outside, though, where there’s pollution and unpredictable weather. 


“Most malls open at 6 am,” Cruz says. “But the stores don’t open until 10.”


So for hours, the father of the senator listens to recordings of Scripture and walks around the mall. When he’s home in Carrollton, he prefers the Vista Ridge Mall. “Inside the mall, the weather never changes,” he says.


He’s picked up a few other traveling tips, too: he used to get light starch on his shirts, but now he gets medium. “You can fold the shirt and lay it on top of your bag, and it won’t wrinkle,” he says. For the long road trips, when it’s just him and talk radio—that’s how he stays up on current events—he brings a separate driving shirt and comfortable driving shoes. 


Before he heads back to the country club, he thanks Judy for her hospitality, and he makes sure he has her address written down, so he can send a thank-you card later. Judy asks if he’ll have a chance to see Ted while he’s around Houston. Rafael says he’d hoped to, but something came up in Washington, and Ted couldn’t make it home. Rafael doesn’t actually see his son much, even when they are in the same city. He’s flown to Washington at least six times in the last year, and he usually stays at Ted’s apartment, often for a week at a time. But even then, there are days when they only get a few minutes together.


“Ted’s just so busy these days,” he says.


Judy walks Rafael to his car, a Lincoln MKZ with a Ted Cruz sticker on the trunk. In the backseat is the detritus of his life on the road: two hats, a jacket, another plaque, notes for the three different books he’s working on, and, of course, his extra shoes and shirt. He makes sure he has a bottle of water handy. 


In a few hours, he’ll be on a plane to Atlanta to talk to a group at Emory. Then it’s Austin. Then San Diego. Then he’ll spend some more time in Iowa, where crowds are already asking if Ted will run for president in 2016. There will be more handshaking, more photos, more coffee in the living rooms of strangers. Yes, he has regrets: relationships that could have gone differently, the mistakes he made as a teenager, not finalizing his U.S. citizenship until 2005. 


But he wouldn’t change anything now. It’s all built to this, and this is the American dream.

Credits

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