Texas’ U.S. Senator and presidential hopeful Ted Cruz might just be the ultimate long-term planner. During his first date with fellow George W. Bush campaigner and future wife Heidi, he asked her about 10 and 20-year life plans. In high school, he detailed his future career almost to a T, including but not limited to studying at Princeton, attending Harvard Law and running for President.
According to childhood friends and college classmates, Cruz’s views today are nearly unchanged from his early political upbringing. His father, a revolutionary prisoner that fled Cuba for North America, and Rolland Storey, a conservative think-tank founder, are perhaps his two greatest influences. In high school, Cruz and a handful of peers would travel under Rolland’s guidance reciting the Constitution and offering interpretations inspired by “free thinkers”. His eyes on the presidential prize, Cruz supplemented his political science training with debate classes and theater performances.
While Cruz shows exceptional ability to see ten or twenty years out, his day-to-day lifestyle shows much less vision, especially with regard to wellness:
Late Start
Since college, Ted has been pounding on the snooze button, and staffers are now accustomed to his late start on the day. “It is a bad habit I have had my whole life… when I was in college, my college roommates super glued the snooze button down so that I couldn’t hit snooze again,” says Cruz. On the campaign trail, earliest events start at 10AM, and Cruz will usually be clutching coffee with “lots of cream” and milk at that hour.
For breakfast, Cruz prefers fast food and McDonald’s egg white sandwich is a favorite. Breakfast can happen at bizarre times, such as 10:45PM during a recent campaign stop in Iowa, when the candidate was serving fresh coffee, eggs and hash browns at a late-night diner. And of course, we all know about his love for bacon:
Junk Food
Cruz’s love for fast food goes beyond the Egg McMuffin. At a recent speech to grade school students, Ted boasted that if Heidi becomes First Lady, “… french fries are coming back to the cafeteria”.
As Vice reports, the candidate went on to say, “Maybe it’s just me, but I kind of think cardboard belongs in the trays, and not in the meals.” Barbecue and Tex-Mex are favorites. Ted is quoted as saying he loves “… anything with cheese”, and his number one order is beef enchiladas. The preferred family outing is to California Pizza Kitchen and he can also be seen at Chick-fil-A.
Cruz has a big Dr. Pepper fridge in his senate office and a never-ending supply of Skittles. Also found are boxes of pizza and cans of soup he’ll save for dinner. He opposes gluten-free meals for the military as a form of “political correctness”.
Night Owl
Ted Cruz is a bona fide night owl, with staffers reporting midnight meetings and never going to bed before 1AM. While Ted makes a point to tuck in his daughters and read bedtime stories, dinner and date nights with Heidi may not start until 10PM. In D.C., he is frequently sighted at the Capital Grille late into the night.
On the road, Cruz multitasks and gets little sleep. As the Wall Street Journal reports:
… he sometimes slept only four hours a night. He would review remarks and then speak without notes. As his aide Bruce Redden sped down the highway between meetings and events, he scrawled out thank-you notes, revised press releases and called into conservative radio shows, simultaneously looking up Bible verses on his smartphone to quote in conversation. In a car cooler, he kept his favorite drink, Diet Dr. Pepper bottled in Texas, as fuel to hit up to eight events in five cities and towns—with the help of a private plane and a sheriff who raced through red lights.
Ted Cruz is on level 350 of CandyCrush and refers to himself as a “player of iPhone games” on his Twitter bio. Other favorite video games include Plants versus Zombies, which he loves to play at length with his daughters to the chagrin of Heidi, and The Creeps. “I don’t have a console, mostly as a time management tool, because if I had one, I would use it far too much,” he told The Daily Beast. He’s also a movie buff, unwinding to classics like The Princess Bride and occasionally caught singing show-tunes to his wife.
While not the embodiment of wellness today, at least Cruz is trying. As a former varsity basketball player with a childhood dream to be point guard for the Houston Rockets, he now wears a Fitbit to manage his exercise and sleep patterns and adds extra steps by pacing during phone calls. His wife Heidi is a Bikram yogi, and even encouraged the campaign to design $35 yoga mats.