Campaign

Kinzinger jokes he could ‘potentially’ run one day to unseat Ted Cruz

by Lauren Sforza - 11/02/23 2:47 PM ET

Former Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) joked that he could “potentially” run for Congress again one day to unseat Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) now that the former congressman has moved to Houston.

“Actually it’d be kind of fun to run against Ted Cruz, to be honest with you. I’m not doing that, let’s be clear. But it would be fun, right? I don’t even know when he’s up,” Kinzinger said when ABC’s Galen Druke, host of the “538” podcast, asked if Texas was a good state to run for Congress in.

“I would love to run against Ted Cruz, because that to me would just be, it would just be like the most, the most complete con artist in politics, like one of them, to be able to run against his face in public would be amazing,” Kinzinger continued.

He said that while he would be interested in challenging Cruz, he is “not in a position” to do so yet. However, he said he would “potentially” consider it if “the timing is right.”

While Kinzinger has been critical of former President Trump and other members of his party, he maintained in the interview that he is still a Republican. He said that Democrats should run a conservative candidate in Texas if they want to win statewide office.

“I think what you want to look at is, first off, if you’re a smart Democratic Party, you’d put somebody like me as your candidate, right? You’d put them through the primary because, I’m sorry, Beto [O’Rourke] is not going to win Texas. If you get a conservative Democrat, you could win Texas.”

Rep. Colin Allred (D-Texas) is the leading challenger against Cruz in his reelection bid for next year. His Senate campaign announced earlier this month it had raised about $4.7 million during the third quarter of this year.

Kinzinger chose not to run for reelection in 2022 after he was one of the two Republicans who served on the select Jan. 6 House committee. He has been on a recent media blitz to promote his new book, “Renegade: Defending Democracy and Liberty in Our Divided Country,” which came out this week.