Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) endorsed conservative Oklahoma Senate candidate T.W. Shannon on Wednesday and will join former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin and Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) at a “Liberty Rally” for him on April 24 in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
“T.W. Shannon is a strong Constitutional conservative who will fight for individual liberty and help turn our country around,” Cruz said of his first endorsement of an open Senate seat in the 2014 midterm cycle. “T.W. embodies the American dream. I’m proud to offer T.W. my enthusiastic endorsement because not only will he vote the right way, but he’ll stand up and fight with us in the Senate to stop President Obama’s assault on our liberties and defend America’s founding principles.”
Shannon, considered the most conservative House Speaker in the history of the country’s reddest state, closed a 35-point deficit in the polls to single digits in a poll taken days after Palin’s endorsement. The Senate Conservatives Fund and Mark Levin have since endorsed him along with Lee over Rep. James Lankford (R-OK), who has been accused of being cozy with the Republican leadership in Congress, in the race to replace retiring Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK).
“One of the things I keep hearing as I travel the state is that my fellow Oklahomans feel like their personal freedoms are under assault,” Shannon said. “Whether it’s the government mandating health insurance we don’t want, or invading our privacy, or forcing people to violate their conscience by providing abortion drugs – Oklahomans now fear their own government is taking away their liberty.”
This is not the first time Palin, who will be in Iowa the week before for Senate candidate Joni Ernst, has teamed with Messrs. Cruz and Lee. She joined Cruz and Lee as they gathered with veterans from across the country to protest the Obama administration’s barricading of the war memorials during the so-called government shutdown last year. Palin also gave Cruz plenty of air cover as he fought to defund Obamacare before it would be implemented and said Cruz and Lee, who was the architect of the defunding strategy, flushed out politicians who spoke one way to their constituents only to vote for the status quo in D.C.
Palin has implied that Shannon would go to Washington and be more like Cruz and Lee than the more establishment politicians, and Shannon has indicated the same, saying in numerous interviews that he is tired of politicians who just want to go to Washington and manage America’s decline instead of pushing for conservative policies to get America back on track.
The Liberty Rally will take place at the Green Country Event Center, which is located at 12000 E. 31st St. in Tulsa, at 6 PM and is free and open to the public. The Shannon campaign also recently released an ad featuring Shannon’s wife, who speaks about how Shannon helped her find Jesus Christ and stood by her while she was battling breast cancer.