Ted Cruz is headed back to his day job to vote for tougher sanctions against North Korea. North Korea vote draws Cruz, Rubio back to Senate But Bernie Sanders skipped the sanctions vote for events in New York.

They’ve skipped classified briefings and high-profile Senate votes in favor of the campaign trail lately. But on Wednesday, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio headed back to their day jobs in Washington, D.C., to vote for tougher sanctions against North Korea — underscoring the pivotal role national security is playing in the 2016 race.

The two rival Senate Republicans and presidential hopefuls would not have made an iota of a difference had they decided to stay on the campaign trail — the legislation sailed through the Senate, 96-0, on Wednesday evening. But skipping the vote — which targets not only the isolated, nuclear-armed regime but also China, another favorite GOP boogeyman — would’ve surely opened Cruz or Rubio to political attacks as they try to prove their fitness to be commander in chief.


“The voice of America has dissipated as one of strength over the past eight years under Barack Obama,” said Sen. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.), a Rubio backer and one of the lead authors of the sanctions bill. “The fact that you’ll see Sen. Rubio and Sen. Cruz return to vote on this really is, I think, championing the strength of the United States that we should lead, not just fall behind.”

On the Democratic side, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) skipped the vote to attend events in New York. His no-show Wednesday drew attention to his vulnerabilities on foreign policy, and it was notable he missed the vote after naming North Korea a top threat to the United States during last week’s Democratic debate.

“It is unfortunate that yet again, Sen. Sanders has shown a lack of interest in vital national security issues, failing to vote on sanctions against the country he said poses the greatest threat to the United States,” Jesse Ferguson, a spokesman for the Hillary Clinton campaign, said following the vote.

Cruz made the first move, announcing midafternoon Tuesday that he would skip campaign events in South Carolina to return to Washington for the North Korea vote. Just hours before the vote, Cruz released a letter he had written to President Barack Obama, decrying the administration’s so-called strategic patience policy that Cruz argues has allowed North Korea’s nuclear ambitions to fester.



“Your administration has, for too long, hoped to achieve denuclearization through failed diplomacy and limited sanctions,” Cruz wrote in the four-page letter.

But this issue resonates much more for Rubio, a member of the Foreign Relations and Intelligence Committees whose foreign policy fluency is a major part of his pitch to voters. As he announced on his website that he would be returning to the Capitol, his campaign boasted that Rubio “has consistently been warning about the developing threat from this lunatic nuclear-armed regime.”

Gardner emphasized that Rubio — who is scrambling for a comeback in South Carolina after a disappointing fifth-place finish in New Hampshire — had made several contributions to the sanctions bill that passed Wednesday, particularly to bolster its human-rights provisions.

Rubio added to the bill measures that spotlight top North Korean officials who oversee prison camps and fund initiatives to promote human rights in the reclusive country, according to the senator’s office.

“In order for him to co-sponsor, he wanted some language added to the human rights provision to beef up the human rights components,” Gardner said Wednesday. “Again, that’s a sign of Marco’s great leadership on human rights issues.”

The two Republicans are also trying to prove their foreign policy mettle in advance of the next GOP nominating contest in South Carolina, where there is a significant military presence. The Republican primary there is Feb. 20.

“In South Carolina, we love our foreign policy; we love our military. Therefore, it is a high priority,” GOP Sen. Tim Scott, the state’s popular junior senator who has endorsed Rubio, said in an interview Wednesday.

Other Republicans vying for president weighed in as well. New Hampshire primary winner Donald Trump declared that Beijing should simply make North Korean leader Kim Jong Un “disappear.”

While GOP presidential contenders jumped Wednesday to flash their foreign policy credentials, Sanders spent the day in New York, meeting with the Rev. Al Sharpton and preparing for an appearance on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” on Wednesday night.

During last week’s debate. when Sanders was asked which nation — North Korea, Iran or Russia — posed the biggest security threat to the United States, Sanders initially responded by naming the Islamic State. Moderator Chuck Todd pushed him to prioritize the three named countries, and Sanders then identified North Korea.

“Clearly North Korea is a very strange situation because it is such an isolated country run by a handful of dictators, or maybe just one, who seems to be somewhat paranoid, and who had nuclear weapons,” Sanders said at the debate. “And our goal there, in my view, is to work and lean strongly on China to put as much pressure.” That assessment differed from the perspective laid out earlier that week by Defense Secretary Ash Carter, who called Russia the most important threat.

On Wednesday, Sanders issued a statement backing the sanctions and calling on the U.S. government to work with China “to pressure Kim Jong Un to stop threatening the stability of the region and join the community of nations.”

But the moves in Congress will likely anger China, which the proposed sanctions are, by definition, targeting because it is North Korea’s most important trading partner. Another Rubio provision in the bill requires the president to identify individuals who knowingly send precious metals and other materials such as aluminum and steel to North Korea — a section specifically meant to send a message to China, the senator’s aides said.

China has been frustrated with North Korea’s nuclear provocations, but it also doesn’t want to see the hermit-like country collapse. That could lead to a massive refugee crisis as well as actions by U.S. military forces stationed in South Korea.

Last week, the Chinese foreign ministry warned against the U.S. effort to impose unilateral sanctions on North Korea.

“We sincerely hope that all parties could meet each other halfway rather than further complicate the issue,” the ministry’s spokesman said.

At the same time, China’s unwillingness to isolate North Korea further, including by more strictly enforcing existing international sanctions, has long been viewed by U.S. diplomats as a major obstacle toward ridding Pyongyang of its nuclear weapons.

After North Korea announced it had tested a hydrogen bomb last month, Secretary of State John Kerry said China must end “business as usual.” And Obama has pressed Chinese leaders to do more to stop the North Koreans.

The GOP-led House passed its sanctions bill in January on a 418-2 vote. Republicans there are still determining what to do with the Senate bill that passed Wednesday, but the differences in the two bills should be easy to reconcile, said Maryland Sen. Ben Cardin, the top Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee.

“I think our bill is stronger,” Cardin said. “Our bill deals with several areas that were not dealt with in the House bill. I think we’re stronger on some of the cyber issues, we’re stronger on some of the required reviews. We have strong provisions on human rights.”

The White House has declined to say whether the president will sign either of the sanctions bills emerging from Congress, but he is widely expected to do so.

“The president continues to work with his counterparts around the country, as do our diplomats, on making sure that we build as robust and as uniform an international response to this as possible,” White House spokesman Eric Schultz said Wednesday. “But I don’t have a direct response to the Senate legislation right now.”

Rachael Bade contributed to this report.

