It’s not an endorsement, but still: Senator Ted Cruz said Representative Pete Sessions’s primary challenger, Katrina Pierson, is “an utterly fearless principled conservative.” That’s per Todd Gillman of the Dallas Morning News, who adds that the senator has also used the “utterly fearless” descriptor for Margaret Thatcher, Representative Steve King (R., Iowa), and Senator Mike Lee (R., Utah).
Cruz’s office emphasized that the comment, made at the North Texas Freedom and Liberty Rally in Allen, Texas, isn’t an endorsement. But it’s still high praise, and it comes on the heels of his father’s endorsement of Pierson. Pierson did a significant amount of volunteer work for Cruz’s campaign and told NRO in September that the senator’s work in Washington inspired her to challenge Sessions:
You see someone like Ted Cruz gets elected, and we’re all skeptical, right? We’re all skeptical about what happens when people to go Washington, D.C. And when we see him standing up for what’s right against the establishment, against the party, and it can be done — it’s like, well, okay then!
Sessions, former chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee and current House Rules chairman, is heavily favored in the contest.