it<u+2019>s called project x, according to the clapperboard seen briefly deep into the footage: roughly 15 hours of raw, unedited video meant for use in making ads for ted cruz<u+2019>s presidential campaign. vast swaths are just cruz and his wife and their two young daughters<u+2014>matching dresses a must<u+2014>walking, talking, smiling, laughing, fishing, eating, holding hands, riding horses, doing puzzles, reading stories, saying grace. cruz spends some time toting a shotgun around a field and firing it at unseen targets in the sky.









filmed the last week of last year<u+2014>some three months before cruz made his candidacy official with a speech at liberty university<u+2014>it was discovered this past summer on youtube, labeled online simply as cruz tx footage 01 to 16.









clips have been surfacing on tv and the internet, showing odd glimpses of the life of a highly scripted candidate. some of the things in the clips we already know: cruz and his father, for instance, are gifted talkers. what they say on camera is rehearsed and familiar, as in nearly verbatim, to anybody who has seen their stump speeches.









but watch all of it, and you learn some things about ted cruz that are hard to imagine ever showing up in a campaign ad. despite the stagecraft, you encounter a family that<u+2019>s messier than the one you<u+2019>ll almost certainly see portrayed as the cruz campaign enters the thick of the primaries. the footage offers an intriguing familial mishmash of single mothers, half-siblings and stepparents, bearing burdens of modern america<u+2014>depression, drinking, drugs.









cruz<u+2019>s wife, an executive for goldman sachs currently on a leave of absence because of the campaign, describes herself as <u+201c>a traditional mom,<u+201d> albeit one who cops to not cooking, and likens her handling of multimillion-dollar investment portfolios to her family<u+2019>s missionary work in africa.









cruz<u+2019>s daughters adore him, you<u+2019>re told, and yet you learn that they sometimes consider him <u+201c>a guest<u+201d> in their houston home.









it also becomes clear that the death of cruz<u+2019>s half sister<u+2014>and what he then did for her son<u+2014>is a story he thinks reflects well enough on him that he wants to tell it in all its wince-inducing detail.









cruz<u+2019>s mother is the least willing participant here<u+2014>the most interesting, too, in part because she is at times so obviously reluctant to play along.









why is this available, all of it, to anyone? evidently, shooting video like this and posting it in a public space lets campaigns and their supportive pacs share the content without technically communicating, which would be against the rules.









what<u+2019>s great about this footage is the camera keeps rolling, people keep talking, and cruz keeps rubbing, and rubbing, and rubbing, his family members<u+2019> shoulders and backs. the staged hugs, the awkward outtakes, the never-to-be-prime-time scenes, the unrehearsed, off-script interactions<u+2014>these are the moments that feel the most revealing, the most captivating, the most authentic. it<u+2019>s an unexpected window into the orbit of a candidate who is otherwise disciplined and relentlessly on-message.









here, seated on an overstuffed chair, is a person you<u+2019>re not expecting: a heavyset, blue-eyed young man wearing a buzz cut, a red and white shirt with horizontal stripes and a smattering of tattoos on his arms. does one of them say menace? on a matching chair to his left: the princeton-educated, harvard-educated former supreme court clerk and current u.s. senator and presidential candidate to whom he<u+2019>s related.









<u+201c>my name is joe maykopet,<u+201d> he says, to the camera and everybody else, <u+201c>i<u+2019>m 29 years old, from philadelphia, pennsylvania, and this is my uncle, ted cruz.<u+201d>









it<u+2019>s unclear what purpose he<u+2019>s supposed to serve in this context.









<u+201c>you know, my nephew joey,<u+201d> cruz says, reaching over and placing his hand on maykopet<u+2019>s back, <u+201c>is someone who i<u+2019>ve known his entire life. i remember holding joey when he was a newborn baby<u+2014>i was 15 when he was born. his mom is my oldest sister, miriam. miriam is nine years older than i am. i have two older sisters, miriam and roxana, who are a year apart in age. and they<u+2019>re half sisters. they<u+2019>re sisters from my father<u+2019>s first marriage.









<u+201c>and when both of them were little girls, our father and their mom divorced,<u+201d> cruz continues. <u+201c>and, you know, kids react differently to divorce. they react differently to their parents splitting apart. it was very hard on my sister miriam. it was very hard on her. she, like a lot of kids unfortunately do, think she blamed herself as a little girl for her parents not staying together.









cruz doesn<u+2019>t say how<u+2014>but she died, in 2011, in pennsylvania, of an accidental drug overdose. it remains unclear at this point in the footage how this information might find its way into a political ad.









<u+201c>um, when miriam got older, um, she struggled,<u+201d> he says. <u+201c>she had a difficult life. miriam had a lot of problems with alcohol abuse and substance abuse pretty much her entire adult life. um, she took a lot of pain meds, she took a lot of<u+2014>she made a lot of bad choices.<u+201d>









he keeps talking<u+2014>about how she <u+201c>raised joey as a single mom,<u+201d> how she <u+201c>had problems with the law,<u+201d> how she <u+201c>fell in with some pretty unsavory characters,<u+201d> how he and his father once went to philadelphia, where she was living, <u+201c>in what was basically a crack house,<u+201d> leaving behind their <u+201c>rings and watches and wallets,<u+201d> to try to <u+201c>help her get back on her feet.<u+201d>









all of this unspools, uncomfortably, as maykopet sits listening to cruz<u+2019>s version of his sad, challenging upbringing with his late mother, at the end of which, finally, cruz gets to what appears to be the takeaway.









the loan he took out on his credit card to pay for maykopet to go to boarding school.









<u+201c>all told,<u+201d> cruz says, <u+201c>it was about $20,000.<u+201d>









maykopet then talks for a while about his life ever since<u+2014>he works in a chocolate factory<u+2014>before a man behind the camera cuts to the crux.









<u+201c>let<u+2019>s wrap it up,<u+201d> comes the voice from behind the camera, <u+201c>and say, <u+2018>i look back and really appreciate the sacrifice my uncle ted made when i was younger. it really helped me get some discipline, and it turned my life around. i really appreciate it.<u+2019><u+201d>









<u+201c>ok, can you say that again?<u+201d> maykopet says, working to remember what they<u+2019>re wanting him to say.









<u+201c>one more hug, and we<u+2019>re out of here,<u+201d> says the cameraman.









what is daddy doing? why is daddy in d.c.?









<u+201c>ok, i<u+2019>m going to say what i really think. you guys can decide if you want to use this,<u+201d> heidi cruz says into the camera with a laugh.









about to say something she knows she shouldn<u+2019>t<u+2014>yet clearly she has things to say.
what i learned watching 15 hours of cruz family videos
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