Ted Cruz delivered the keynote address at Saturday night’s dinner of the California Republican Party’s spring convention in San Diego, spending nearly an hour laying out the Republican case ahead of November’s midterm elections with the kind of combative energy for which he has become known.
Speaking to an audience of more than 250 party faithful at the Sheraton San Diego Resort, the Texas senator called the Democratic Party “the party of the rich,” labelled the press “liars,” and ran through an inventory of what he described as tangible Republican achievements over the past year — though the private mood at the convention told a more complicated story about the party’s electoral prospects.
Cruz opened his border remarks with figures his audience welcomed loudly. “We have seen illegal border crossings drop more than 99%,” he told the crowd. “What does it mean when illegal border crossings drop 99%? We’ve seen the murder rate across America drop 20%. That’s real results.” He moved from there to drug overdose deaths, citing a drop from higher prior-year figures to 71,000 deaths in 2025. “That number is still too high, but there are 36,000 Americans who are still alive today because President Trump was re-elected in 2024,” Cruz said, drawing applause.
The senator also spoke at length about tax policy, pointing to the no-tax-on-tips provision, the elimination of overtime taxation, the Social Security tax exemption and the Trump Accounts — children’s savings accounts created under last year’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act — as evidence of legislative productivity that he said would be visible to voters receiving refunds before April 15. “April 15 is coming up, and all across the country now, people are getting tax refunds,” he said.
The speech was designed to construct a coherent affirmative argument at a moment when the national mood is complicated by the ongoing war with Iran, elevated fuel prices and Trump’s persistently underwater approval ratings.
Behind the applause and the merchandise tables doing brisk business in Trump-branded attire, however, the convention provided a candid window into how Republican insiders are privately assessing November. US Representative Darrell Issa, a San Diego-area Republican stalwart who is retiring this year, told a Saturday afternoon panel plainly: “We may not hold the House in the midterms.” Cruz himself acknowledged the difficulty in unguarded terms, telling the audience: “If the election was today, it would be bumpy because the left is angry.” That level of internal candour from senior party figures at a party convention is notable.
Multiple attendees and representatives at the convention cited the Iran war specifically as a source of political risk. One Republican voter who had attended five consecutive California conventions described “mixed feelings” about how the conflict would play with general election voters, saying: “Hopefully they can wrap it up sooner than later.”
US Representative Tom McClintock, a longtime Trump ally, predicted the conflict would not “go on more than a few more weeks,” but added that the president’s polarising character had simultaneously energised both the Republican base and the Democratic opposition. Those assessments are consistent with recent national polling showing broad disapproval of the administration’s handling of both Iran and economic conditions.
Cruz, who won re-election to the Senate in 2024 and is not on the ballot this cycle, has positioned himself prominently as a defender of the Republican congressional majority and a voice for the party heading into the post-Trump era. He has been increasingly public in his warnings about what a Democratic House takeover would mean, telling Fox News separately that Democrats would launch impeachment proceedings against Trump within weeks of winning control.
“If the Democrats take the House, no meaningful legislation will pass for the next two years, and we will see the president impeached over and over and over again,” he said. His Commerce Committee chairmanship, which involves a major markup session on Tuesday, gives him a substantive platform alongside the high-visibility political role he is actively cultivating. Observers following the 2028 Republican landscape note that his California appearance and busy midterm calendar are consistent with laying groundwork for a future presidential bid.
