Long before Ted Cruz became a senator from Texas, he was a gamer. He’s known for being pugilistic on the Senate floor, but sometimes he’d rather be fighting cartoon zombies on his iPhone. 
 
 It’s an uncommon lens through which to view Cruz, a controversial conservative figure who is now running for the highest political office in the country. Cruz’s video game habit fits into a largely hidden geek persona that lurks just behind his better-known public reputation as an obstinate Tea Party firebrand. 
 
 At the moment, Cruz is playing “Plants vs. Zombies,” a game where users collect sunlight points to feed plants who fight off waves of zombies; “Candy Crush,” the puzzle game where he claims he’s in the 217th level; and “The Creeps!,” a tower defense game. 
 
 His video game addiction is so severe, Cruz says, he has to proactively deny himself the ability to spend time on it. 
 
 “I don’t have a console, mostly as a time management tool, because if I had one, I would use it far too much,” he told The Daily Beast. 
 
 The Texas Republican explains the origins of his love for video games as a generational phenomenon. He ticks off his favorite games at his childhood arcade: “Galaga,” “Space Invaders,” “Centipede.” 
 
 “I was a kid growing up in the ’70s and ’80s. I had a Nintendo, an Atari,” he said. “I still remember the Christmas we got our first ‘Pong’ game.” 
 
 His love for video games evolved over time as he entered college, then law school. David Panton, who was Cruz’s roommate for 4½ years through Princeton and later Harvard Law, recalls all-nighters spent on “Super Mario Brothers” and Japanese fighting games. 
 
 Putting aside debate and school government, Panton said, “our favorite activity…was video games.” 
 
 “We would spend many hours playing video games, often until the sun came up. In reality, Ted was a much better player than I was—he beat me in everything—but I think I was sufficiently competitive that he felt somewhat challenged,” Panton told The Daily Beast. “I’m a far better video game player today as a result of Ted Cruz.” 
 
 Video games have only once entered into Cruz’s comments about government and public policy: in December, when he publicly mused about the overuse of drones in warfare. 
 
 “There are also concerns from the perspective of national security. No administration has used drones as aggressively as has the Obama administration. And I’m worried about what I would call video-game warfare,” Cruz said at a Foreign Policy Initiative forum in Washington, D.C. 
 
 Here’s where video games help: Cruz suffers from a perception of rigidity. When asked a question, his responses are always airtight and measured, the mark of a former debate champion. Often these conversations seem stilted and rehearsed. Unlike a more gregarious politician like Senator John McCain, Cruz doesn’t make unscripted jokes or pal around much. 
 
 If asked a question Wednesday that he was previously asked on Monday, he will repeat his original answer nearly word for word, as if it were memorized, raising the risk of questions about how genuine he really is. 
 
 His passion for video games, and the way he uses them to connect with his children, cuts through some of that. 
 
 “I play with my daughters,” he told The Daily Beast. “One of the fun things that I do with Caroline and Catherine is we get on the iPhone or the iPad and play games. Drives my wife crazy. She doesn’t like it, but both girls like to curl up and play games. In our household, I’m the one in charge of taking the girls to Chuck E. Cheese, and it’s not much of a secret that I don’t mind doing so. I’m trying to get brownie points from [his wife] Heidi for taking them to Chuck E. Cheese, and she’s like, ‘What, are you kidding? You have more fun there than they do.’” 
 
 Geeks are cool now, they rule the world. So Cruz’s love for video games is an admission that presidential candidates have only really been able to make in the past few years. 
 
 But there is one time a video game was used against Cruz. In Texas’s 2012 Senate Republican primary, David Dewhurst launched an attack ad accusing Cruz of being “PAC-Man.” Dewhurst used the classic video game and accompanying theme song to highlight the funds Cruz received from super PACs in Washington, D.C. The ad wasn’t enough to put Dewhurst over the top, however: Cruz ended up winning by 14 points. ||||| Long before Ted Cruz became a senator from Texas, he was a gamer. He’s known for being pugilistic on the Senate floor, but sometimes he’d rather be fighting cartoon zombies on his iPhone. 
 
 It’s an uncommon lens through which to view Cruz, a controversial conservative figure who is now running for the highest political office in the country. Cruz’s video game habit fits into a largely hidden geek persona that lurks just behind his better-known public reputation as an obstinate Tea Party firebrand. 
 
 At the moment, Cruz is playing “Plants vs. Zombies,” a game where users collect sunlight points to feed plants who fight off waves of zombies; “Candy Crush,” the puzzle game where he claims he’s in the 217th level; and “The Creeps!,” a tower defense game. 
 
 His video game addiction is so severe, Cruz says, he has to proactively deny himself the ability to spend time on it. 
 
 “I don’t have a console, mostly as a time management tool, because if I had one, I would use it far too much,” he told The Daily Beast. 
 
 The Texas Republican explains the origins of his love for video games as a generational phenomenon. He ticks off his favorite games at his childhood arcade: “Galaga,” “Space Invaders,” “Centipede.” 
 
 “I was a kid growing up in the ’70s and ’80s. I had a Nintendo, an Atari,” he said. “I still remember the Christmas we got our first ‘Pong’ game.” 
 
 His love for video games evolved over time as he entered college, then law school. David Panton, who was Cruz’s roommate for 4½ years through Princeton and later Harvard Law, recalls all-nighters spent on “Super Mario Brothers” and Japanese fighting games. 
 
 Putting aside debate and school government, Panton said, “our favorite activity…was video games.” 
 
 “We would spend many hours playing video games, often until the sun came up. In reality, Ted was a much better player than I was—he beat me in everything—but I think I was sufficiently competitive that he felt somewhat challenged,” Panton told The Daily Beast. “I’m a far better video game player today as a result of Ted Cruz.” 
 
 Video games have only once entered into Cruz’s comments about government and public policy: in December, when he publicly mused about the overuse of drones in warfare. 
 
 “There are also concerns from the perspective of national security. No administration has used drones as aggressively as has the Obama administration. And I’m worried about what I would call video-game warfare,” Cruz said at a Foreign Policy Initiative forum in Washington, D.C. 
 
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 Here’s where video games help: Cruz suffers from a perception of rigidity. When asked a question, his responses are always airtight and measured, the mark of a former debate champion. Often these conversations seem stilted and rehearsed. Unlike a more gregarious politician like Senator John McCain, Cruz doesn’t make unscripted jokes or pal around much. 
 
 If asked a question Wednesday that he was previously asked on Monday, he will repeat his original answer nearly word for word, as if it were memorized, raising the risk of questions about how genuine he really is. 
 
 His passion for video games, and the way he uses them to connect with his children, cuts through some of that. 
 
 “I play with my daughters,” he told The Daily Beast. “One of the fun things that I do with Caroline and Catherine is we get on the iPhone or the iPad and play games. Drives my wife crazy. She doesn’t like it, but both girls like to curl up and play games. In our household, I’m the one in charge of taking the girls to Chuck E. Cheese, and it’s not much of a secret that I don’t mind doing so. I’m trying to get brownie points from [his wife] Heidi for taking them to Chuck E. Cheese, and she’s like, ‘What, are you kidding? You have more fun there than they do.’” 
 
 Geeks are cool now, they rule the world. So Cruz’s love for video games is an admission that presidential candidates have only really been able to make in the past few years. 
 
 But there is one time a video game was used against Cruz. In Texas’s 2012 Senate Republican primary, David Dewhurst launched an attack ad accusing Cruz of being “PAC-Man.” Dewhurst used the classic video game and accompanying theme song to highlight the funds Cruz received from super PACs in Washington, D.C. The ad wasn’t enough to put Dewhurst over the top, however: Cruz ended up winning by 14 points. ||||| NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. presidential candidates are spending long days on the campaign trail and their nights in a succession of budget hotels, often in small towns. Not Donald Trump. 
 
 After nearly every rally, the billionaire real estate developer hops into one of his planes or helicopters and returns to New York so that he can sleep in his own bed in his marble-and-gold-furnished Trump Tower apartment in Manhattan. 
 
 In November and December, Trump held six rallies in Iowa, visited a local production plant and held one town hall, flying home each night. His nearest rival for the Republican nomination, Ted Cruz, has zigzagged around the state, holding around a dozen town halls and twice as many "meet-and-greet" sessions, and bedding down between stops in hotels. 
 
 Tweet ID: "682291228898115585" 
 
 Trump’s determination to sleep at home every night raises eyebrows among election campaign veterans, who say it could cost him. Voters in Iowa and New Hampshire often want more personal attention; they feel they play a special role in choosing presidential nominees because their contests are held first. 
 
 Trump leads in polls in New Hampshire but he has slipped behind Cruz in Iowa. Cruz has done what U.S. presidential candidates typically do: He has made the state a virtual second home in the run-up to Iowa’s first-in-the-nation caucus. 
 
 This week Cruz is crisscrossing the state in a bus, cruising through small hamlets with stops at a pizza place, coffee house and even a water park. 
 
 Trump's schedule this week, by contrast, illustrates his tendency to get out of town quickly. On Monday evening he addressed a crowd in Lowell, Massachusetts, and was due to address a rally in Claremont, New Hampshire, just a couple of hours north the following day. Instead of overnighting in a hotel, he flew home. On Tuesday Trump flew to Claremont and then returned to New York. 
 
 Tweet ID: "684197871009292292" 
 
 In an interview, Trump said he needs time each morning in his Manhattan office to run his businesses, which include a string of high-end hotels and resorts. 
 
 “It works very well for me,” he said, adding that he can quickly get to and from campaign stops thanks to his private aircraft fleet. “For the smaller airports, the (Cessna) Citation X, and for the larger airports, the Boeing 757,” which has a big bed. 
 
 He also has a helicopter, which he used while traveling between his Palm Beach mansion and a rally in Hilton Head, South Carolina, on Dec. 30, where once again he did not stay the night. 
 
 “HOMEBODY” TRUMP 
 
 “Trump is a man who likes to be on the couch with a good cheeseburger and likes to watch TV - he’s a homebody,” said his friend and former adviser Roger Stone, who recently founded a pro-Trump Super PAC, a political group that can raise unlimited funds to advocate for Trump as long as it does not coordinate with his campaign. 
 
 "He likes being in his own bed, even if it means coming into Teterboro or LaGuardia after midnight," he added, referring to two airports Trump uses in the New York area. 
 
 Tweet ID: "683522343680000000" 
 
 Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump gestures as if he is sleeping while talking about his opponent Jeb Bush during a Trump for President campaign rally in Raleigh, North Carolina December 4, 2015. REUTERS/Jonathan Drake 
 
 Trump rejected Stone’s explanation. 
 
 While Trump breakfasts in his Manhattan quarters, with sweeping views of Central Park, his opponents are waking up in Holiday Inns or Courtyard Marriotts. 
 
 Cruz spent Monday night in a motel in Missouri Valley, Iowa, where vending machines sold items with long-past expiry dates. His campaign manager Jeff Roe fired off a series of bemused tweets about the state of the motel, lamenting the presence of “the long hair on the pillow” that he found in his room. 
 
 Strategists said Trump not only risks alienating potential supporters but also the political operatives in states that can help turn out the vote. 
 
 “Not everything in a presidential campaign can be accomplished with a speech or a rally,” said Matt Schlapp, chairman of the American Conservative Union, a grassroots conservative political group, and a former White House political director for President George W. Bush. The group has not endorsed a candidate. 
 
 “You attend a family event of a supporter in a key state: weddings, funerals, graduations, Christmas parties - these have an important psychological impact,” he said. 
 
 Trump said he has stayed in Iowa “numerous times,” but a campaign source who did not want to be identified said he remembered Trump staying overnight only once in Iowa and once in New Hampshire. 
 
 ON THE ROAD 
 
 That’s a far cry from candidates like New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who has logged more hours in New Hampshire than any other Republican still in the race. Christie and others regularly hold meet-and-greets, attend local government meetings and find ways to make themselves approachable to voters ahead of the state’s Feb. 9 primary election. 
 
 In Iowa, where state residents will attend caucuses on Feb. 1, Cruz is in the middle of a week-long bus tour that will take him to 36 different counties. 
 
 Former Democratic candidate Chris Dodd took the practice to an extreme in 2008, when he went so far as to move his entire family to Iowa, enrolling his children in school there. He nonetheless lost to Barack Obama. 
 
 Trump sees it more as a numbers game. His rallies attract between 3,000 and 20,000 people each time he appears and are often broadcast on television. 
 
 “I have more people at one event than most candidates see in a month,” he said. 
 
 U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump gestures during a campaign rally in Burlington, Vermont January 7, 2016. REUTERS/Erin Siegal 
 
 Even so, Trump said he planned to do smaller events in the future and may even decide on some campaign stops that are veritable pilgrimages for his competitors. One such spot is the Red Arrow Diner in Manchester, New Hampshire, where candidates are expected to stop by and greet customers. 
 
 “It’s a distinct possibility,” he said. 
 
 He also said he would begin making multi-day trips to early primary states like Iowa, South Carolina and Nevada, where he can choose to stay at his own hotel, the Trump International Hotel Las Vegas. ||||| Wolf Blitzer didn’t think Ted Cruz had sufficiently answered his question. Neither did Hugh Hewitt. Or Maria Bartiromo. Or Dana Bash. So each moderator at the last two Republican debates pressed Cruz further. 
 
 “Yes or no?” Blitzer demanded. “But you haven’t told us how to pay for it,” Bartiromo said. “I just want to clarify what you’re saying right now,” Bash pushed. 
 
 Story Continued Below 
 
 They each got more from Cruz. And Cruz got what he wanted too — more airtime. 
 
 In an exclusive interview with POLITICO, Cruz described how he overhauled his debate strategy after the early faceoffs to insert himself far more aggressively and strategically in the most recent Republican debates. It’s showed, as he’s squeezed extra speaking time from the moderators and displayed some of the skills and tactics he honed as a championship collegiate debater. 
 
 “The first couple of debates I sat back and very much let it come to me,” Cruz said aboard his campaign bus in Iowa. But the moderators’ attempts to play the candidates against one another, he said, had left him with “among the least speaking time of any person on that stage.” 
 
 So Cruz made a tactical shift. “We made a conscious decision to assert myself more aggressively into the conversation,” he said, “because if every question was going to begin with Candidate A will you please insult Candidate B, I didn’t want to be involved in that. But I also didn’t want to stand there silently for two hours, while others were throwing rocks at each other.” 
 
 The results have been stark. After coasting through the early debates with a low profile, Cruz spoke more than any of his rivals in each of the last two debates. In the December CNN contest, Cruz spoke for nearly three minutes more than his closest rival, Donald Trump — 16 minutes and 27 seconds to 13 minutes and 33 seconds, according to POLITICO’s calculations. In November, he lapped his closest foe by one minute and 41 seconds at the Fox Business debate. 
 
 Cruz will be tested anew as the 2016 candidates clash in Charleston, South Carolina, on Thursday, where he will stand center stage with Trump, just as tensions between the two have turned into open rhetorical warfare, as Trump has repeatedly questioned Cruz’s eligibility to be president because he was born in Canada and Cruz has raised Trump’s “New York values.” 
 
 Cruz is inarguably the most experienced and technically proficient debater on stage. At Princeton, he was a championship-level competitor in the American Parliamentary Debate Association, known by peers for his exhaustive preparation and breakdown of performances after the fact. And his old colleagues and foes recognize the Cruz they knew in college on the nation’s biggest stage — the polish, the dramatic pauses, the tactical topic shifts. 
 
 “You can be certain Ted has studied how these moderators have acted before, or how similar debates played out,” said Stephen Wunker, who was a year ahead of Cruz at Princeton. “If he thinks he can effectively get two bites at the apple, he's going to do it.” 
 
 In one remarkable sequence in the November debate, Cruz spoke for three minutes and 25 seconds straight, slowed only by a 10-word follow-up from Bartiromo. Later in that same debate, Fox Business’s Neil Cavuto asked Cruz a question and then followed-up twice. The result was Cruz answering questions for a full four minutes straight — without any of his rivals butting in. 
 
 That is an eternity in debates defined by 60- and 90-second answers, and 30-second rebuttals. To put it in more context, Cruz received one fewer question than Ben Carson that debate and yet still spoke for 45 percent more time. And in the October debate, Bush spoke for five minutes and 49 seconds — total. 
 
 Cruz said he wasn’t so much intentionally leaving moderators dangling as answering what he wanted. 
 
 “I do my best to answer every question that’s asked,” Cruz said. “But at the same time, I’m trying to communicate an affirmative message and the agenda of the media interviewers does not happen to be my agenda. The media interviewers typically have one outcome they would like, which is namely for Republicans to rip each other apart, to attack, insult and ridicule each other and the outcome of that, of course, is to help Hillary Clinton in the end win the general election.” 
 
 “I’m not interested in furthering that agenda,” Cruz said. 
 
 For those who debated with Cruz in college, it’s a familiar refrain. 
 
 Cruz and his partner, David Panton, would counsel younger debaters in the art of “changing the paradigm.” 
 
 “Make sure the paradigm shift belongs to you, that you’re not just responding on a point-by-point basis,” Cruz would advise, according to one younger Princeton teammate, Monica Youn. 
 
 So his old colleagues were not surprised when Cruz turned on the CNBC moderators, in perhaps the breakout moment of the 2016 debate season. 
 
 “The questions that have been asked so far in this debate illustrate why the American people don't trust the media. This is not a cage match,” Cruz bellowed. “And, you look at the questions — ‘Donald Trump, are you a comic-book villain?’ ‘Ben Carson, can you do math?’ ‘John Kasich, will you insult two people over here?’ ‘Marco Rubio, why don't you resign?’ ‘Jeb Bush, why have your numbers fallen?’” 
 
 “How about talking about the substantive issues the people care about?” Cruz chided. 
 
 Frank Luntz, the GOP focus group guru, said at the time that Cruz’s anti-media rant scored higher than any he had registered in 20 years of monitoring primary debates. (Cruz had ignored the initial question about the debt limit entirely. “I asked you about the debt limit and I got no answer,” CNBC’s Carl Quintanilla concluded when Cruz was finished. Cruz tried to buy himself more time. “You want me to answer that question? I'm happy to answer the question,” he began. But CNBC’s John Harwood cut him off. “So you don't actually want to hear the answer, John?” Cruz snapped back.) 
 
 “Look, that’s Ted,” Wunker said. “That is picking the ground he wants to fight on and doing it in so compelling a manner, you can’t just brush it aside and go back to business as usual.” 
 
 Andrew Wender Cohen, who as a student at Columbia debated against Cruz several times, said Cruz’s refusal to engage with the arguments put forward by the other side was maddening. 
 
 “He’ll get up, give a speech and ignore everything you just said,” he recalled. “When you lose to someone who does that, you want to lose your mind. It’s like, you won all the arguments, he just gave that big speech.” 
 
 Debate preparation time has been harder to come by for Cruz and the rest of the field as the voting has neared. So far, he has held only one full, simulated debate to prepare, and it came before the first GOP clash in Cleveland, according to a top Cruz adviser. Rick Tyler, Cruz’s national spokesman, portrayed Trump, even mimicking the Manhattan businessman’s unique cadence. (“Rick Tyler,” Cruz said, “does an extraordinary Donald Trump.”) 
 
 Cruz has steadfastly refused to say whether any his old college sparring partners are participating in his debate preparations. He and Panton, who went on to become the second African-American editor of the Harvard Law Review (after Barack Obama) remain close. “I have relied on a diverse and talented team,” is all Cruz would say. Panton did not return a call for comment. 
 
 Instead of mock debates, Cruz’s brain trust has gathered more informally around tables to talk about expected lines of inquiry and attack. 
 
 “More of the time is spent discussing strategy and objectives, discussing thorny policy issues, potential attacks that others might raise,” Cruz said. On the day of a debate itself, Cruz aides say, the senator simply wants to decompress with his wife, Heidi, and his two young daughters. He reads the Bible, they say, but also plays games on his iPhone. 
 
 The current rotation includes “Plants vs. Zombies 2” and “Tower Madness 2.” 
 
 As for Cruz’s tactics with moderators, when POLITICO asked him directly if he was not answering questions fully in order to gain extra time, he did what he does best. 
 
 He pivoted. 
 
 “My objective in each debate,” Cruz said, “is to communicate my positive, optimistic, conservative vision for this country and to contrast my proven record of standing and fighting for conservative principles over and over again.” 
 
 Authors:
– Donald Trump may be preparing for Thursday night's GOP debate by scarfing cheeseburgers, but Ted Cruz has his own preparation strategies, he tells Politico in a look at how well the candidate is doing during the debates. While the site notes that the Texas senator's "brain trust has gathered more informally around tables to talk about expected lines of inquiry and attack" rather than hold mock debates, it's what Cruz does the day of the debate that's somewhat unexpected. Well, maybe not the Bible-reading part, or the part where he simply hangs out with his wife, Heidi, and two young daughters to "decompress," Politico notes. Instead, there's another stress reliever the self-confessed video-game addict indulges in: playing games on his iPhone, with Plants vs. Zombies 2 and TowerMadness 2 currently claiming the top spots in his game queue. (Check out what his favorite childhood video games were on the Daily Beast.)