As Republican Ted Cruz began his ground game in California, his wife Heidi followed his stint on the stump in New York with a visit to his presidential campaign’s Mineola office on Monday.
Commending New York’s “industriousness,” Heidi Cruz thanked the more than 100 volunteers and supporters who packed the Old Country Road office, one of three Long Island stops she made as the Texas senator’s campaign works to stem GOP frontrunner Donald Trump’s advance as New York’s April 19 primary approaches.
“I want people to vote not just because it’s their civic duty, but because they passionately believe this country needs Ted,” said Heidi Cruz, a Goldman Sachs investment manager who said she held her first job and paid her first taxes in New York.
Cruz’s appearances followed a week of presidential campaign activity on Long Island and in New York City, including a Trump rally in Bethpage last Wednesday.
Ted Cruz faces an uphill battle against Trump in New York — 56 percent of likely GOP primary voters chose the real estate magnate to Cruz’s 20 percent in a Quinnipiac University poll last month.
Cruz was holding rallies in California on Monday ahead of that state’s June 7 primary.
Maureen Daly, the director of the Mineola office Cruz’s campaign opened April 4, said the state campaign’s goal is to keep Trump’s share of the primary vote below 50 percent.
Many local voters were swayed to Cruz after Trump mocked Heidi Cruz on Twitter last month and made “disgraceful” remarks about women since then, Daly said.
“It’s a rare person who can have both pro-life and pro-choice outraged in one state,” said Daly, who ran Republican Grant Lally’s 2014 congressional campaign in New York’s Third District.
Cruz’s remarks decrying Trump’s “New York values” have not proven much of a roadblock among voters because “it was clear what he meant,” Daly said — he was targeting liberal politicians such as New York City Mayor Bill DeBlasio and Gov. Andrew Cuomo, not regular New Yorkers.
Six people whose homes sustained damage from Superstorm Sandy in 2012 protested across the street before Heidi Cruz arrived, decrying her husband’s vote against a 2013 federal disaster relief bill.
Trump’s New York campaign told the Sandy survivors about Cruz’s event. Two of them said they support Trump; two said they were undecided in the election.
Their homes still have unrepaired storm damage and have not been fully compensated through Federal Emergency Management Agency flood insurance policies, they said.
“We’re here. We’re trying to get somebody to listen that if you vote against us, we’re not gonna vote for you,” said Philip Rullo of Oceanside, a Trump supporter.
Cruz was one of 32 senators who voted against the Disaster Relief Appropriations Act of 2013, a $50 billion funding package for repairs and storm mitigation in Sandy’s wake.
In a January 2013 statement, Cruz called the bill “a Christmas tree for billions in unrelated spending” on projects such as repairs at Smithsonian facilities and additional funding for Head Start, an early childhood education program.
Ron DeMarrais of Lynbrook said he thinks Trump, a Queens native, would better represent New York’s interests because of his connection to the area and his ability to fix and build things.
“He knows what it will take to bring the common person back into being productive and to making money, and being able to afford a place where — his interests are at hand as well,” DeMarrais said. “… He needs people, regular people, and we’re the backbone of this country.”
Heidi Cruz did not take questions from reporters on Monday, but Ted Cruz supporter Lazer Axelman of Whitestone, Queens, said Cruz’s vote against the Sandy bill’s unrelated spending was justified and consistent with his “constitutionalist” record.
“I get why they’re upset, but they also need to understand that that’s why it had to be voted down,” he said.
Cruz would work better for New York by shrinking the federal government and giving states more local control, Axelman said.
