Sounding variously like a proud father and a tent-revival preacher, Rafael Cruz spoke to a crowd of several hundred at Grove City College on Tuesday night, warning that “if we lose this battle, America will be destroyed, and there is no place to go.”
Mr. Cruz, who fled his native Cuba during the Communist revolution there, is the father of Republican presidential candidate and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. He has often acted as a surrogate for his son’s campaign, especially in reaching out to evangelical voters.
“Many Christians have said, ‘Politics is a dirty business, I don’t want any part of it,’” he said Tuesday night. But “if the righteous are not running for office, if the righteous are not even voting, what is left? The wicked electing the wicked.”
“We see a lot of religious persecution in America today,” he said, referring to “religious freedom” controversies over whether business owners should be able to deny services to same-sex couples.
Grove City, a Christian college that touts the fact that it accepts no federal aid as a means of preserving its independence, was a natural backdrop for Mr. Cruz’s remarks. And although moderator Paul Kangor, a political science professor there, took pains not to turn the event into a political rally, mobilizing the faithful isn’t just a spiritual mission for the elder Cruz. It is also a political strategy for his son.
From its early success in Iowa, the Cruz campaign has said that it would rely heavily on getting Christians to the polls, even at the expense of connecting with more moderate voters.
Whether that strategy will prevail in Pennsylvania’s April 26 primary remains to be seen. According to a 2014 Pew Research Center study, only 19 percent of Pennsylvanians identify as evangelical Protestants — lower than the U.S. average of 25.4 percent. And polls consistently show Ted Cruz lagging behind front-runner Donald Trump in polls here, despite performing well with religious voters.
The elder Mr. Cruz often focused on telling his own immigrant success story, recalling how he learned to speak English by watching movies, while offering proud recollections of his son’s early intellectual endeavors. “Before Ted left high school, he was passionate about the Constitution,” he said. “And that passion became like fire in his bones.”
“I can hardly contain the tears of my eyes,” he said of his son’s success. “All I can think is, ‘only in America.’”
But there was no escaping politics entirely Tuesday night. Mr. Cruz decried Mr. Trump’s personal attacks on his son, described the Democratic presidential contenders as “socialists,” and said President Barack Obama’s rapprochement with Cuba was “disastrous.”
“There was this young, charismatic leader talking about hope and change,” Mr. Cruz said of the Cuba of his youth, prompting knowing chuckles from an audience that remembered Mr. Obama’s 2008 campaign motto. “His name was Fidel Castro.”
Asked what he, a Cuban emigre, made of the candidacy of avowed democratic socialist Bernie Sanders, Mr. Cruz said, “I lost my freedom once; I’m not willing to lose it again. And neither should you.”
Chris Potter: cpotter@post-gazette.com or 412-263-2533.
First Published: April 13, 2016, 4:00 a.m.
