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Floor Speech

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Mr. CRUZ. Mr. President, I rise today to honor an extraordinary Texan and an incredibly dear friend. Karon Kaye Tinsley Goolsby passed away on Monday, June 19, 2023.

Kaye is someone who has been an incredible friend to me for two decades now. She lived in Katy, TX, and was married to the love of her life, Gary. Their son Greg was born in 1981. She loved her family. She loved her grandkids.

Kaye was a grassroots organizer unlike any other. Kaye was incredibly active in the Texas Federation of Republican Women and in the National Federation of Republican Women.

I still remember when I first met Kaye. It was 2004. It was at the Republican National Convention. I was a 33-year-old young lawyer. I was serving as the solicitor general in Texas, and I had hopes to run for office, but I didn't know a whole lot of people in politics. At that convention, I met Kaye.

She lit up any room she was in. She had a personality that was incandescent. As Kaye would later observe, for some reason, this kid-- that would be me--just followed her everywhere she went. And at the end of the day, it wasn't complicated. Kaye knew everybody.

When I followed Kaye from one grassroots activist to another to another, Kaye would turn around and introduce me to one after the other, after the other, after the other and say: Have you met Ted? Have you met Ted? Have you met Ted? She had the energy of an atom bomb. It was unstoppable.

Kaye became one of my very closest friends and most trusted advisers. When I first launched a campaign for attorney general of Texas, I remember sitting in Kaye's car for about 3 hours trying to convince her to come support our campaign, that I needed her. She, quite rightly, said: Are you out of your mind? You don't have the support. You don't have the money. You don't have the name ID. How on Earth can you possibly win?

My answer was: Kaye, with your support, we can do anything.

After about 3 hours, her husband Gary, who is also a dear friend, told her: Kaye, just say yes. He is going to keep asking you until you do.

She finally laughed and said yes.

That race for attorney general never ended up materializing. The vacancy we thought existed ended up not happening.

But 2 years later, I launched a campaign for U.S. Senate, and Kaye was my grassroots chairman. I will tell you, in that race, I was supposed to have no prayer. My opponent in that race was the incumbent Lieutenant Governor, who was personally worth $200 million, who had put $35 million of his own money in the race, and I had never been elected to anything. The last thing I was elected to was the student council. But we had a weapon unlike anything else: We had Kaye.

You have to understand, Kaye would be on three cell phones at once, calling people relentlessly. She would greet them all the same way. She would go: Hey, sugar. And ``sugar''--she could drag that second syllable out for three sentences. And she would be talking to people all over the State.

Early on in the Senate campaign, we rolled out a list of Republican women leaders in TFRW across the State who would endorse my campaign. We rolled out a list. It was like a cannon shot. It shocked everyone. That was 100 percent Kaye. That was Kaye on the phone with one after the other, after the other, saying: Trust me. This kid, he is going to do what he said.

After that, a few weeks later, we rolled out a second endorsement list with over 80 leaders of the Republican Women's Club all over the State.

In response to that release, my opponent in that race fired his campaign manager. That is how big a deal it was. He had assumed that all the Republican Women's Clubs across the State would be with him. But he did not understand that when you had Kaye working the phones, and working the phones, and working the phones--and I would travel around with Kaye from event to event to event, and she couldn't be stopped. She would take me to this person, to that person, to the next person. It was relentless.

In 2016, when I ran for President, Kaye was my national grassroots chairman. Kaye and I spent hundreds of hours on the bus together in Iowa and out on the ground in New Hampshire and South Carolina and all over the country. And, I will tell you, Kaye would talk to Republican women in every State.

Mr. President, you are from the great State of Hawaii. I guarantee you, Kaye was on the phone with Republican women in the State of Hawaii.

She had an energy that was fiery. And, boy, she could get mad. Kaye has chewed me out probably more than my wife Heidi has. She would get mad at this or that or whatever you did, and she would tell you exactly what she thought.

I remember, once, Kaye was really mad at me. I don't even remember for what. But I had to drive all the way out to her house in Katy, TX, and sit in her living room while she spent about an hour and a half explaining to me how I had screwed something up that she was mad at me for.

She also made me eat some of her homemade brownies. Kaye had a lot of wonderful gifts, but cooking was not one of them. And the brownies were pretty terrible, but I told Kaye they were delicious and I appreciated it and I took my medicine.

Kaye and I, as we were talking to Republican women's groups--I used to say all the time that ``Republican women are the heart and soul''-- and when I say that, Kaye, from the back of the room, would call out, ``and the brains,'' and everyone would laugh, and I would say, ``and the brains of the Republican Party.''

It started off as an ad-lib joke, but it became something we said all over the State and eventually all over the country.

Kaye had kidney disease and liver disease. She spent the last several months waiting on the list for a transplant. Kaye was a tiny lady. She needed a small liver. Several times it looked like they were going to find a liver, a kidney.

Just a few weeks ago, I got a text from Gary: It looks like we have got one. Surgery is tomorrow.

That next morning, I woke up praying for Kaye, until I got a text a couple of hours later that said the surgery fell through; the transplant wasn't a match.

I have never known someone like Kaye Goolsby. Kaye loved this country--loved it. She loved Texas. And she was so fierce and so full of life.

When Kaye passed, I texted her husband, and I later put out on Twitter--I said the angels were weeping and so am I. But I will tell you this: I have no doubt that, right now up in Heaven, Kaye Goolsby is organizing and reorganizing everything. She is going to the angels saying: This isn't right. You need to change this. You need to move this over here. We can do better.

After a long struggle with liver and kidney disease, Kaye has gone to be with the Lord. Those of us she left behind, we are hurting. We will miss her. I will still wonder, when my phone rings, if on the other end is going to be that lilting southern accent saying: ``Hey, sugar.'' But we are going to have to wait a little while to hear it again.

This is one of my favorite pictures. You can see the joy. She could laugh. She brought that joy to everyone else. Her grandkids called her Kaye-Kaye. My daughters called her Kaye-Kaye too.

To Kaye Goolsby, my dear, dear friend, the heart and soul and the brains, we love you, Kaye.

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