Over the last year, a new campaign expense has emerged, and in keeping with the times it’s sufficiently dystopian: personal bodyguards.
When Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) went before the National Rifle Association’s annual gathering on Friday, he spoke about liberal “elites” who advocate for gun control while hiding behind “private security.”
But the irony of Cruz making that statement is that it’s actually Cruz himself who spends the most on private bodyguards among Republicans in Congress.
Since October 2020, the Cruz campaign has paid Houston-area executive protection firm Atlas Glinn nearly half a million dollars to protect himself and his family—$499,661, almost all of it in monthly lump sums averaging around $30,000, according to federal disclosures. (The Atlas Glinn website features a photo of a security detail guarding Cruz in a parade car.)
Cruz—a Harvard Law School grad who in the aftermath of last week’s elementary school massacre in Uvalde, Texas, attacked the Democratic politicians and the media for dominating the gun control narrative—also put more than $800 of his donors’ money toward “security equipment” last year from Houston-based boutique Caroline+Morgan Interiors. It’s not immediately clear from the company’s website exactly which of its wares would fit the bill as security equipment.
While Cruz is the biggest GOP spender, however, he also hauls in the most cash from pro-gun rights groups, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics. But the threat of violence now appears to be outweighing those rewards, at least in financial terms. Cruz has spent so much donor money ensuring his own safety that he has fully exhausted the $442,343 he’s received over the years from the gun lobby, and then some.
Still, it’s becoming more difficult for Cruz to snappily defend the gun industry. And last week he began to find himself more isolated politically on the issue than at any point in recent memory.
Source: Ted Cruz Complains of ‘Elites’ Using Bodyguards. He’s One of Them.