Not Ted Cruz
At first blush, it appeared that former La Marque Mayor Geraldine Sam filed as a Republican candidate for U.S. Senate because she was mad at incumbent Ted Cruz. As a delegate to the Republican National Convention last summer, she unloaded on Cruz when he made a prime-time speech and declined to endorse Donald Trump as the party nominee. Instead, he urged delegates to vote for their conservative principles.
“You lied to me. You lied and said you were going to support the party nominee, and you won’t. Then you lied to me. And I’m very upset at this time,” Sam told a reporter at the convention. “I came to this convention as a Cruz delegate, and I’m leaving supporting Donald Trump as the party nominee.”
Cruz did endorse Trump two months later, and Sam has since forgiven him. “After a while I started looking at things as to why Ted was angry and did not endorse Trump at that time,” Sam told me. During the presidential campaign, Trump had called Cruz “lyin’ Ted,” insulted his wife’s looks, and said Cruz’s father was involved in a 1963 plot to kill President Kennedy.
Now, Sam’s anger is directed at Trump. “I just look at some of the things the president is doing, and I just don’t agree with those things. I want him to be presidential. I want him to stop tweeting at all hours of the morning, calling mother’s children SOBs. Those are things a lot of us don’t agree with.”
Sam told me she was particularly bothered when Trump recently claimed that the parents of three UCLA basketball players jailed on shoplifting charges did not show him enough gratitude when China released them. “I should have left them in jail!” Trump tweeted after the fact.
“When you do things for people, you should do it out of the goodness of your heart, and not as a Godfather figure expecting them to bow down to you,” Sam said.
Perhaps, like me, you are slightly confused by now. So, to recap: Sam was mad at Cruz, but she isn’t anymore. She’s now mad at Trump, but she’s going to show it by running against Cruz in the Republican primary.
Makes perfect sense. Sam has an interesting history as a candidate, and as Mayor of La Marque – you should click over and read about it, with a bit more background here. I should note that Sam was actually the first candidate of either party to file for Senate; Beto O’Rourke officially filed yesterday. Cruz has two other primary challengers – Dan McQueen has abandoned his campaign, thus leaving the “underqualified former mayor who did not finish their first term” slot in the race to Sam. It’s good to know there will be at least one election we can follow for the sheer ridiculous joy of it.
If only there had been some way for Sam to know what a self-centered, feckless, ignorant, intellectually lazy, mean-spirited fool Trump was before she voted for him!
She can achieve forgiveness, but she has to take the “I told you sos” like a grownup first. Then let us see if she’s truly committed to holding the Mango Mussolini accountable for all his bad faith and bad actions.