The editorial board of The Houston Chronicle has called on Senator Ted Cruz to resign over his Cancun vacation scandal in a scathing editorial published on Friday.
Describing the Republican senator’s decision to take his family to Mexico as the state was lashed by severe winter weather as “foolish” and “callous”, the paper said that Texans’ anger with him “could power an entire electrical grid”.
Millions of Texans were suffering through record low temperatures with no electricity or potable water when Mr Cruz was spotted at Houston’s international airport boarding a flight to Cancun.
The editorial says the incident is “sadly telling of his approach to the job over the past eight years”.
Mr Cruz returned to Texas on Thursday amid the mounting fury at him for abandoning his constituents.
While the editorial acknowledged that the crisis is the handiwork of state officials, not federal lawmakers, “we expect leadership and perhaps a little solidarity from a man whose re-election campaign heavily rested on claims of his compassion and advocacy for suffering Texans after Hurricane Harvey”.
On Mr Cruz reasoning that his “tone-deaf travel” was a “gallant act of good parenting”, the board wrote, “Cry us a Mai Tai”, pointing out that good parents all over Houston were “modelling resilience for their kids” while making do without food or water, let alone iPhones and Netflix.
This is the second time this year that the Chronicle has called on the senator to resign. The editorial board originally demanded he did so after his role in riling up the pro-Trump rioters who carried out the violent storming of the US Capitol on 6 January.
The board said at the time that Mr Cruz wouldn’t be missed as he never prioritised the “unsexy tedium of governing and advocacy” over his own goal of one day winning the presidency.
“Escaping to Mexico,” they write, “hits a new low — even by the senator’s standards.”
Admitting their error for having assumed that he was “too calculated for such a gross error of political judgment”, the editorial board concludes with their advice to him to resign.
“Seems like you could use a break and we could, too, from an ineffective politician who, even in crisis, puts his personal itinerary before the needs of Texans.”
