Heidi Cruz: Navigating Finance, Politics, and Public Scrutiny
Heidi Cruz has carved a notable path through the intersecting worlds of finance, politics, and public service. Her career, marked by roles in economic policy and investment banking, coupled with her position as the wife of Senator Ted Cruz, places her in a unique position of influence and scrutiny. This article explores Heidi Cruz’s educational background, professional achievements, and her role in the political arena.
Education and Early Career
Heidi Suzanne Nelson was born on August 7, 1972, in San Luis Obispo County, California. Presidential politics first captured Heidi Nelson Cruz’s attention in the 1980s, when the 12-year-old read a Time magazine piece about the Ronald Reagan-Walter Mondale race while working at her San Luis Obispo bread stand. Two threads have been common to Heidi Cruz’s family for generations: medical careers and strong religious faith. Both her paternal and maternal grandfathers were doctors, as were multiple uncles. Cruz’s great-great-grandfather was a doctor and former president of Loma Linda University. Her maternal grandfather lived in Africa close to three decades, serving a mission while working at a hospital in the former Belgian Congo.
Growing up, Cruz visited numerous countries with her father, Peter Nelson, a dentist with a practice in San Luis Obispo; her mother, Suzanne Nelson, a former dental hygienist; and her brother, Scott Nelson, as part of missionary work her parents performed and dental work her father conducted in developing countries. The missions they performed were through the Seventh-day Adventist Church. “I think those early travels made me expansive in terms of the things I wanted to do,” Cruz said.
While the family’s travels to numerous countries kept them busy, life in San Luis Obispo wasn’t much calmer. It was Peter Nelson’s idea to create a bread business to keep the children busy, but it provided lasting life lessons. “I think it definitely taught us the value of hard work,” Cruz said. “We were used to being highly productive at all times.” While Cruz initially worked for her brother, eventually the two went solo. “We got kind of competitive with each other,” Cruz recalled. “We probably made 200 loaves a week.” “She was always the outgoing one that got people to try samples,” their mother said.
After graduating from Valley View Adventist Academy in Arroyo Grande, Cruz’s bread-making days ended when she left to attend Monterey Bay Academy, an Adventist-owned boarding school in Monterey. “Years after, people would say, ‘I need to know where that little girl is that sold bread,’ ” Suzanne Nelson said.
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Cruz holds an economics and international relations degree from Claremont McKenna College and an MBA from Harvard Business School. This rigorous academic background prepared her for a career marked by strategic thinking and financial acumen.
Public Service and Economic Policy
Early in her career, Heidi Cruz demonstrated a commitment to public service, working in the George W. Bush administration. She served as Special Assistant to the President for Economic Policy and as a director at the Federal Reserve Bank of Houston. During this time, Cruz reported directly to National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice and worked on the Latin America desk at the Department of Treasury in 2002. These positions provided her with firsthand experience in economic governance, skills that she would later use in her corporate and political advisory roles.
Transition to Finance: Goldman Sachs
Following her tenure in the White House, Cruz transitioned into the private sector, joining Goldman Sachs. She spent several years there, ultimately becoming a managing director in the firm's Houston office. This phase of her career highlights her expertise in wealth management and strategic finance, establishing her as a respected figure in the financial industry. At Goldman Sachs, a class of employees are promoted to "managing directors" biennially.
Role in Ted Cruz's Political Career
Heidi Cruz met Ted Cruz in 2000 in Austin, Texas, when the two were policy aides on Bush’s presidential campaign. They married five months later. While he aspired to high public office, his wife eventually bowed out of government, taking business jobs with private corporations such as JPMorgan Chase and investment banking firm Goldman Sachs, where she’s now managing director in Houston.
As Heidi Cruz worked for Wall Street giants, her brother - a pediatric orthopedic surgeon - spent a year in Haiti helping heal the wounded poor after the devastating 2010 earthquake. “The best payment I ever got was two mangoes and a hug,” The Tribune reported him saying at the time.
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If her brother sought to make a difference one surgery at a time, Cruz sought change on a broader scale by helping her husband get elected to the Senate. When he was behind in the polls, Ted Cruz suggested they liquidate their savings - $1.2 million - and bolster the campaign chest. “What astonished me, then and now,” Cruz recently told The New York Times, “was Heidi within 60 seconds said, ‘Absolutely,’ with no hesitation.”
Heidi Cruz has played a significant role in her husband's political career. She took a leave of absence from Goldman Sachs to serve as a senior strategist and key advisor to his 2016 presidential campaign. Her organizational skills and understanding of political finance were credited with providing necessary infrastructure to the campaign. Cruz’s hard-charging career is an anomaly among the spouses of Republican presidential candidates; her analog is more Hillary Rodham Clinton than Ann Romney. She is on leave from her job as a managing director of Goldman Sachs in Houston. A graduate of Claremont McKenna College and Harvard Business School, she was once the one with a more promising political career, working in the George W. Bush White House on economic policy and serving as a director for the Western Hemisphere on the National Security Council.
“People who believe that women who work outside the home are uncaring and can’t be good mothers are just misguided,” she told Politico last year. “I would work and want to have a career, regardless of if my husband works. It’s not only for the money.”
She has now become the campaign’s most prolific fundraiser, making 600 calls last quarter, she said. She aims to make 30 each day, but typically does about 20 to 25. “The calls that I’m making are to max out donors. Max out and super PAC,” she said. “If you’re having real conversations, it’s hard to do more than, like, 25 or 30. It’s like 10 hours and you take a break here and there.
Cruz’s campaign raised $14.2 million in the first and second quarters; it said it raised more than $1 million in the 100 hours after the first Republican debate last month. Heidi Cruz pores over spreadsheets and donor lists, calling people who have supported Ted Cruz in the past and may be likely to do so in the future. Her perfect max-out donor, she said, is conservative, middle class, a business owner, and the type of person who can afford to give the limit but considers it a bit of a sacrifice.
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“I don’t want to say it’s easy and I don’t close every deal,” she said. “I think people want to be a part of something that addresses the main issue of the day, number one, which is Washington versus the people.” Heidi Cruz genuinely believes her husband can win the White House, something that made it easier for her to take a leave from her job, which Goldman is holding. She said she is surprised that it was not difficult for her, a woman who has always been laser-focused on professional goals, to take time off.
“We believe that God would call us to do this. Some people believe other things, energy, whatever. But we are called to do this right now, and I feel that we are called to be part of the race. And I also believe Ted can win,” she said. “This is an investment for people, whether it’s their time or their money. And as an investor, I tell them, ‘You’re an investor,'” she said.
“And you shouldn’t invest because the product aligns with your values, you should invest because you think this thing is really gonna sell. The company’s gonna be successful. So when we talk about winnability, I spend a lot of time on the phone talking about how Ted wins, and he wins by building this grass-roots army that becomes a coalition,” she said. Heidi Cruz said she thinks her husband can broaden the Republican tent. She said her husband, who has called the Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex marriage “the very definition of tyranny,” was publicly asked whether he would hire gay people in his administration, “and he said ‘Of course,’ ” she said.
There’s one place Cruz said she’s not really looking for donations: Wall Street. “I’m not calling down the Goldman employee list, that’s for sure,” she said. “If people make the choice at Goldman Sachs to support Ted and they’ve reached out to me, then I push them hard. But I’m not going to go pressure Goldman people to give to Ted and I’m not going to pressure campaign people to support Goldman. Separation of church and state,” she said.
Cruz’s husband has railed against Wall Street and said that Goldman engages in “crony capitalism.” Ted Cruz often mentions his wife’s business career on the campaign trail, but rarely the company for which she works. It did come up early on in the campaign, when Ted Cruz said that the family probably would seek medical insurance under the Affordable Care Act after losing their benefits when Heidi took a leave. Heidi Cruz said that her husband is “against big businesses getting special deals with the government that small businesses can’t get” because they don’t have armies of lawyers, and that she doesn’t think Goldman was looking for one.
“A lot of Wall Street is out of touch with mainstream America,” she said. “That’s not our funding base.” Cruz met her husband working on Bush’s 2000 campaign. She told the New York Times in 2001 that she started while on break from business school after she had just broken up with her boyfriend of two years. She planned to “forget boys” and “kill myself on the campaign.” One night she went out with Ted Cruz; they spent hours talking, with him peppering her with questions about her background, goals and plans. They became a couple in short order and were married soon after.
Like many couples juggling two careers, it hasn’t always been simple. Ted moved to Austin in 2003 to work as Texas solicitor general; his career had floundered in Washington while hers had taken off. Heidi followed later and fell into a period of depression, during which a police officer found her sitting on the grass between a median and the freeway, according to BuzzFeed.
“When I moved to Texas, it really was for Ted and I wasn’t comfortable with that,” she said. The period spurred her to take a look at her life through the prism of her religion. “I had to decide, ‘Who am I living for, anyway?’ ” she said. “I don’t want it to be for myself, and I say it’s not for myself, but it kind of is, and I’m not going to live only for my husband. . .
She ended up moving to Houston to work for Goldman while her husband stayed in Austin. The family now lives in Houston. She is willing to talk about almost any part of her life on the trail, she said, to illustrate to both men and women that there are trade-offs people must make in life. But her main job is to bolster her husband’s candidacy. “There are women who use their husband’s candidacies for their own” purposes, she said. “I love my life. I love my career. This is not for me.
Political Advocacy and Focus Areas
While her primary role remains supportive of her husband, Heidi Cruz has engaged in policy advocacy, particularly concerning economic stability and national security. She has commented on international trade and American competitiveness, advocating for policies that support American businesses in the global marketplace. Her perspective aligns with deregulation and fiscal conservatism, mirroring her husband’s platform.
Public Image and Scrutiny
As a political spouse, Heidi Cruz has faced public scrutiny, particularly during moments of crisis. The incident involving the Cruz family's trip to Cancún during the Texas winter storm in February 2021 drew widespread criticism. Heidi Cruz acknowledged the public anger, calling it "a terrible error in judgment."
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