Brady said it will take time for Cruz to make inroads with these donors, but added that the senator has “a wonderful, not-so-secret weapon” at his disposal: his wife. Heidi Nelson Cruz is a top executive with Goldman Sachs; she also serves on the Greater Houston Partnership Board, an organization full of political contributors. “She’s well-respected and has lots of admirers,” Brady said. “So that could be part of the reaching out—whether it’s Wall Street or Texas.”
Brady, himself a master fundraiser with deep connections to the political spenders in Dallas and Houston, said the donor community has taken notice of the freshman senator’s newfound interest in their campaign dollars.
Cruz’s outreach, however, has not produced an instant conversion among the GOP’s donor elite. Adelson found Cruz to be “too right wing,” according the New York Observer. (Adelson later disputed that characterization, but it seemed to be a recurring theme during Cruz’s swing through New York. At another meeting in Manhattan, he answered a similar assertion by saying: “I don’t think I’m all that conservative.”)
And the senator’s latest confrontation on Capitol Hill—provoking a weekend session of Congress that was aimed at making a point on immigration but resulted in more of President Obama’s nominees being confirmed—will only play into the negative stereotype that’s scaring off potential financiers of Cruz’s presidential campaign.
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