Columbia, South Carolina
An ice cream social at a supporter’s house. A meet-and-greet with veterans. A roundtable with sheriffs. An evening rally at a sweltering barbecue joint and a winding photo line afterward.
Ted Cruz’s Monday schedule in South Carolina looked a lot like his itinerary a decade ago when he was campaigning for president here. But the Texas senator is not running again — at least not yet.
Rather, Cruz had traveled to the early GOP primary battleground to stump for state Attorney General Alan Wilson, a longtime ally who won Tuesday’s Republican runoff for governor.
From allies to adversaries, past supporters to potential rivals, and the primary voters who may ultimately decide his fate, there’s near-unanimous agreement in the Republican Party on this: Cruz is laying the groundwork for another presidential campaign, even if it means taking on Vice President JD Vance or whoever President Donald Trump ultimately endorses.
“I would be shocked if he doesn’t run,” said Bob Vander Plaats, an influential conservative figure in Iowa who was a national co-chair of Cruz’s 2016 campaign. Cruz and Vander Plaats reunited last month when Cruz went to campaign for Republicans in Iowa.
Cruz remains a prolific fundraiser with ties to some of the party’s biggest donors. He successfully endorsed Wilson and another recent gubernatorial contender, Rick Jackson in Georgia, over Trump-backed rivals. And he has built a considerable following in the new media ecosystem driving Republican politics.
Speaking to CNN in South Carolina, Cruz waved off 2028 speculation, saying he is “all in” on helping Republicans save their congressional majorities in the midterms.
“I will be on the road a lot campaigning for that, and there’ll be plenty of time to worry about future elections in the future,” he said.
But Texas Sen. John Cornyn recently observed to Semafor that Cruz “wants to be the next president.” Vance, Trump’s most likely political heir, told Megyn Kelly that Cruz is “clearly” running.
Cruz speaks to guests at the South Carolina Tea Party Coalition Convention on January 16, 2016, in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.
Cruz speaks to reporters while campaigning with South Carolina Attorney General and Republican gubernatorial candidate Alan Wilson at Doc's Barbeque on Wednesday in Columbia, South Carolina.
A new Cruz campaign would test whether there is space in the Republican Party for someone who straddles the ideological divide between the pre-Trump and post-Trump GOP. While Cruz has cast himself as a reliable White House ally in the Senate, he has also voiced skepticism of Trump’s tariff strategy, publicly questioned the administration’s targeting of ABC late night host Jimmy Kimmel, and has remained critical of Big Tech even as top Silicon Valley leaders build their relationships with the president.
Perhaps most significantly, Cruz has emerged as one of the most vocal Republican critics of the US-Iran peace deal. Vance is leading the US delegation in negotiations with Tehran.
Cruz has long been open about wanting to run for president again, calling his 2016 run “the most fun I’ve ever had in my life.” He said in 2023 that he would “fully hope and expect to run again at some point.” This week, Cruz will address the Road to Majority Conference, an annual gathering of Christian conservatives put on by the Faith and Freedom Coalition. It’s a room full of the kinds of voters and leaders that once embraced Cruz’s presidential aspirations but moved to Trump.
“His profile has only risen,” said Vander Plaats. “He’s on Fox News a lot, he’s got a top-rated podcast. People hear of him, they see of him. They view him as a fighter for the agenda.”
That podcast, “Verdict,” airs multiple times a week and often reaches more than a million listeners, providing a uniquely large platform within the party. On an episode last week, Cruz extensively scrutinized the Iran negotiations, saying Trump is getting “very poor advice” and that giving Iran access to up to $300 billion would be a “very serious mistake.”
Within Trump’s inner circle, a Cruz 2028 campaign is treated as all but certain, rankling White House allies who are intent on protecting the president’s power to dictate the future of MAGA and the party. The frustration spilled into the open last week as Trump allies — including the president’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr. — pounced on Cruz for attacking the Iran deal and accused him of posturing for future primary voters.
“No one takes him seriously as a contender,” said Alex Bruesewitz, a Trump adviser and one of those Cruz critics. “Will he run? Absolutely, because his ego is 10 times bigger than the state he represents. He has no support. But he’ll have a war chest and an apparatus because he’s done this before.”
Even those who stood with Cruz in 2016 now acknowledge the climb he faces to recapture the hearts of GOP voters.
“A decade is a long time in between runs, and a lot has changed,” said conservative talk show host Steve Deace, an early Cruz backer in 2016 when he hosted a show on Iowa’s airwaves. “The ultimate voice that matters is Chief MAGA: Trump. We’re all watching, but it’s really a primary of one.”
Cruz holds a press conference with families who lost loved ones in the January 29, 2025, plane crash at Washington Reagan National Airport on December 15, 2025.
Cruz’s positioning
A 2028 campaign by Cruz would be another audacious move in a political career marked by them.
Cruz arrived in the Senate in 2013 as a conservative insurgent, a profile he parlayed into a 2016 presidential campaign that won the Iowa caucuses and posed the most serious threat to Trump’s march to the nomination. While Cruz and Trump fought bitterly then, they eventually patched things up and grew closer, including during Cruz’s closer-than-expected 2018 Senate race against Democrat Beto O’Rourke.
Now, Cruz chairs the powerful Senate Commerce Committee and touts himself as Trump’s “strongest ally” in the Senate. Trump has called Cruz a good friend but has also reminded his former rival who ended up the top dog in 2016.
“We had quite a campaign against Ted and it worked out quite nicely,” Trump said last year when asked about Cruz’s 2028 ambitions.
On trade, Cruz has said he is “not a fan” of tariffs and warned last year that Trump’s sweeping global trade war could be “terrible for America.” On foreign policy, Cruz has long said he occupies the “third point of a triangle” where the other points represent interventionism and isolationism.
Cruz is a fierce defender of the US-Israel alliance in the face of growing MAGA skepticism. He has confronted antisemitism head-on within the GOP and has accused influential figures like Nick Fuentes and Tucker Carlson of giving oxygen to bigotry.
“I am going to do everything I can to fight and defeat this poison, and we will not let it destroy our party or our nation,” Cruz said during his recent visit to Iowa, where he called Carlson “the single most dangerous” person pushing antisemitism on the right, a charge Carlson denies. The two sparred on Carlson’s podcast last year, which included a heated back-and-forth over Israel.
Cruz leaves the Senate Chamber for a meeting with President Donald Trump on Capitol Hill on Wednesday in Washington, DC.
Reached by phone Wednesday, Carlson said of Cruz’s remarks: “I’ve never met a single person in 50 years who likes Ted Cruz or agrees that a senator’s job is to defend a foreign country. I think Ted is speaking to and for his donors, and I assume they’ll be the only ones voting for him. But he’s welcome back on my show anytime.”
On each of those issues, there is daylight with Vance. The vice president has vocally defended Trump’s tariff policies, has been more skeptical of foreign intervention — a stance that Trump has tested at times — and he has downplayed the idea that antisemitism is “exploding” on the right. He has declined to criticize Carlson, suggesting he is a valuable part of the political coalition that elected Trump in 2024.
Vance sarcastically remarked in a recent interview that if he does not run in 2028, the “committed, non-interventionist, America-First Ted Cruz” could carry his banner inside the party.
“He’s clearly running for president,” Vance added, more seriously.
Mike Gonzalez, a South Carolina pastor who co-chaired Cruz’s 2016 campaign there, said Cruz could run in 2028 as a “strict constitutional conservative versus that nationalism, populism, kind of candidate that Trump has” inspired.
Another Cruz 2016 supporter, the Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, said Cruz “leans toward old-school fiscal conservatism” and was not necessarily being “hawkish” toward Iran but “the angst and concern of the American electorate … because we don’t trust Iran.”
Both agreed that a primary between Vance and Cruz could benefit the party. Gonzalez said he would “love to see (Cruz) and JD Vance debate toe-to-toe.”
Vice President JD Vance speaks to members of the media before boarding Air Force Two as he leaves Switzerland after meeting with representatives from Iran to negotiate details of their peace agreement at Emmen Air Base, near Lucerne, on June 22.
“I truly believe that this is a healthy discussion that the party must have and that the conservative movement should have going forward, post-President Trump,” Rodriguez said.
Deace anticipates Cruz’s support for Israel would remain popular with many older evangelical voters that are key to nominating contests in Iowa and South Carolina, as well as with some top GOP donors like Miriam Adelson, who has a longstanding relationship with the Texas Republican.
Deace said the issue of Israel “gives Ted a lane to at least justify running again and it’ll be enough for Ted to be welcomed back as a candidate.”
“But he’s going to have to show he has broader MAGA appeal to win,” Deace added.
The challenge could be seen earlier this year at the Conservative Political Action Conference held just outside Dallas. There, Cruz outlined a vision for a Republican Party that combines Trump’s populism and bedrock GOP principles like small government, low taxes and limited regulations.
The home-state crowd warmly received their junior senator. But when CPAC organizers polled attendees on their pick for president in 2028, Vance was the overwhelming favorite followed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
Just 1% picked Cruz.
South Carolina Attorney General and Republican gubernatorial candidate Alan Wilson, left, and U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), greet voters at Doc's Barbeque on June 22, in Columbia, South Carolina.
‘God bless the great state of South Carolina’
Cruz’s endorsement of Wilson made him a key figure in a political debacle for Trump in South Carolina. Trump endorsed Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette in the primary, but after she advanced to a runoff against Wilson, Cruz endorsed Wilson and a pro-Cruz super PAC launched TV ads boosting him.
Evette sought to make Cruz’s skepticism of the Iran peace deal a liability for Wilson, calling on him to condemn Cruz’s “attacks on President Trump.”
Trump announced two days later he would be supporting both candidates in the runoff. Cruz downplayed any tensions with Trump over the contest, telling CNN they “agree on the vast majority of races, and I was very pleased to see that the president agreed with me on this one.”
Alumni of Cruz’s 2016 campaign attended some of his stops with Wilson, and Cruz deployed some lines that were staples of his old stump speech.
“God bless the great state of South Carolina,” Cruz said after taking the microphone Monday evening in Columbia, addressing a packed barbecue restaurant. He drew applause while reviving his call to abolish the Internal Revenue Service and put a “padlock” on its headquarters, a promise he made repeatedly in 2016.
Cruz paid homage to South Carolina repeatedly and bantered with local reporters about his barbecue preferences. “The best sauce is no sauce at all,” he opined.
During an earlier stop in Sumter, a town about an hour outside Columbia, an audience member asked Cruz about his interest in serving on the Supreme Court. He gave the response he has given for years: While it is “flattering” to be talked about that way, he could never withdraw from “political fights” the way a justice would have to.
After the Columbia event, Robert Alt, a 78-year-old retiree from nearby Chapin, said it was “too early” for 2028 speculation but said Cruz is among several potential candidates that he likes.
“I think that right now Vance, I would say, is probably the chosen one,” Alt said, “but that doesn’t mean that he’s going to be chosen.”
The attendees suggested they saw a pathway for Cruz even if Vance runs. Jim Hartman, an 85-year-old insurance agent from Columbia, praised both Cruz and Vance but said he thought Cruz was a more committed conservative who would “stand firm.”
Michael Alfaro, a 40-year-old Wilson supporter who came to the Columbia rally, said Cruz’s decision to endorse Wilson when Trump was exclusively backing Evette “is going to be remembered here” and could even serve as a “roadmap” for the Texas Republican in the future.
Why? “Because he’s going to run for president,” Alfaro said.