Heidi Cruz was mocked on Twitter for appearing to suggest that she and husband Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) couldn’t afford a second home because his lawmaker salary is only $174,000 per year.
Cruz, a Goldman Sachs managing director, said in an interview with The Atlantic that she was working 70-hour weeks as the family’s “primary breadwinner.” She said she nevertheless was supportive and “mission-driven” on what her spouse is “accomplishing.”
“I really hope he wins his re-election,” she said of her husband, who is challenged in the November midterms by Democrat Beto O’Rourke.
But the couple would not be “buying a second home anytime soon,” Cruz added in the piece published Thursday.
Her comment was dubbed “tone-deaf” by some people on social media. Her husband’s Senate wage alone is almost four times the $46,000 U.S. average. And when Ted Cruz released his family’s tax filings during the 2016 presidential campaign, they showed he and Heidi had made $5 million between 2011 and 2014 (including $970,000 his first year in the Senate).
Read the full interview in The Atlantic here.
This story has been updated to include more detailed information about the Cruz family income.