Cruz hits snooze: GOP candidate prefers to do his campaigning later in the day

Republican presidential hopeful Sen. Ted Cruz on September 19, 2015 in Des Moines, Iowa. (2015 Getty Images)

In a campaign season dominated by early morning talk show appearances and 8 a.m. appearances at diners, Ted Cruz is hitting the snooze button.

The Texas senator, who is locked in a fierce battle for the Republican nomination, is known to start and end his days late – a habit he gets from his mother.

“When he comes home from the campaign trail, they’re often in the living room talking late, late into the night,” Cruz’s wife Heidi said of her husband and his mother, according to the Washington Post.

Cruz is also not likely to qualify for the early-bird specials at restaurants either. When the Senate is in session, the lawmaker often stays at the Capital Grille well into the night and for his wife’s birthday the couple went out for a romantic dinner … at 11p.m.

“You didn’t often try to set 7 a.m. radio interviews or television shows because it didn’t really fit his rhythm,” Chip Roy, his former Senate chief of staff, told the Post. “He had no problem if you scheduled for him to go have a late dinner or drinks with somebody at 9 p.m. That didn’t faze him in the slightest.”

On the campaign trail, Cruz is not a fan of early stops – if he has to make them, it is normally accompanied by a cup of coffee – and seems to hit his stride by late afternoon, or better yet after 6 p.m.

While stumping his way to a win in the Iowa Caucus, Cruz made a 10:45 p.m. appearance at a truck-stop diner in Missouri Valley, Iowa, where he was pouring coffee for posing for selfies until close to midnight.

The late night appearances can be a problem for supporters – in one Iowa stop the rally ran so late that people streamed out the door before it was over – and for staff, who have trouble getting responses from the candidate, or getting him to wake up, before 10 a.m.

“A lot of times you would have to text him to make sure he was getting out of bed for a pickup,” Carpenter said. “If I wanted an answer to something, there was no way I’d send it before 10 a.m., because I knew it would get lost in the flow and he wouldn’t get to it until later that night.”

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