Richard Linklater is the Academy Award-nominated director of Boyhood, Dazed and Confused, the Before trilogy with Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy, and many other films. He's also a proud Texan, and on Monday he entered the political fight over Texas's senate seat with a 30-second commercial that takes dead aim at Ted Cruz.

The senate race in Texas is one of the most closely watched contests this midterm season. Beto O'Rourke, a Democratic congressman from El Paso, is challenging Cruz. In such a deep red state as Texas, where a Democrat hasn't won a Senate seat in three decades, this might seem like a fool's errand, but O'Rourke is giving Democrats hope for a major upset—and the latest polling shows O'Rourke trailing Cruz by just five percent.

Cruz's campaign rhetoric has focused on O'Rourke being too liberal for the state of Texas. In fact, his campaign slogan is "Tough as Texas." And that's exactly what the Linklater ad aims to exploit. In the commercial, an older man—the actor Sonny Carl Davis—sits at a diner table, a cup of coffee in front of him, and works himself into a minor froth claiming Cruz is not tough at all.

"Come on, if someone called my wife dog, and said my daddy was in on the Kennedy assassination, I wouldn't be kissing their ass," he says. "You stick a finger in their chest and give them a few choice words or you drag their ass out by the woodshed and kick their ass, Ted."

Although Davis never mentions Trump, his remarks reference when, during the 2016 Republican Primary, Trump mocked the appearance of Ted Cruz's wife, Heidi, and suggested Cruz's father had a hand in assassinating President Kennedy. (He didn't.)

If the ad looks familiar at all it's because Davis appeared in Linklater's 2011 dark political comedy, Bernie, in which he looks directly at the camera and explains the various stereotypes of people in Texas. He's wearing the same outfit in the movie as he is in the political commercial.

This isn't the first that Linklater has sought to help O'Rourke. In September, he sponsored a short-film contest that sought to raise money for the Democrat's Senate campaign. Another prominent Texan, Willie Nelson, has also thrown his support behind O'Rourke, holding a benefit concert for the Democrat in recent weeks.

Michael Sebastian Michael Sebastian was named editor-in-chief of Esquire in June 2019 where he oversees print and digital content, strategy and operations.

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