New Yorkers give Ted Cruz a piece of their mind

New Yorkers responded indignantly to Texas Sen. Ted Cruz’s disparaging reference to “New York values.” (Photo: Susan Walsh/Associated Press)

New Yorkers haven’t exactly embraced Donald Trump as a hometown hero, but that doesn’t mean they’re going to let anyone talk smack about their city — even in the context of political mudslinging.

During an interview with syndicated conservative radio host Howie Carr Tuesday, Republican Presidential candidate Ted Cruz was asked for his thoughts on rival Trump using Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the USA” at recent campaign rallies — an apparent dig at Cruz’s Canadian heritage. The Texas senator suggested it might make more sense for his fellow Republican candidate to play Frank Sinatra’s “New York, New York” instead, because Trump “comes from New York and embodies New York values.”

The comment was clearly meant as an insult toward Trump, who’d recently been calling into question the Canadian-born senator’s eligibility for the White House. But many, including Fox Business anchor and GOP debate moderator Maria Bartiromo, were confused about what, exactly, Cruz meant by “New York values.”

In response to Bartiromo’s request for elaboration during the debate Thursday night, Cruz explained that as a New Yorker, she might not know what he meant, but in the rest of the country, “everyone understands that the values in New York City are socially liberal, are pro-abortion, are pro-gay-marriage, are focused around money and the media.”

In other words, Cruz continued, “not a lot of conservatives come out of Manhattan.”

Cruz was quickly and concisely shut down by Trump, who first countered that “a lot of conservatives do come out of Manhattan, including William F. Buckley,” before proceeding to extol the city’s ability to unite in the wake of massive tragedy following the Sept. 11 attacks.

The debate may have moved on from there, but Trump wasn’t about to get the last word on the matter. Many prominent New Yorkers have since come forth to give Cruz a piece of their mind.

“New York is the most ethnically diverse city in the world,” New Yorker.com editor Nicholas Thompson tweeted Thursday night. “Donald Trump does not embody New York values.”

Thompson also noted the irony of Cruz’s New York dig just days after a New York Times report revealed that his 2012 Senate campaign was largely funded by an undisclosed loan from one of the city’s largest investment banks.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo called into MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” Friday to discuss Cruz’s comments, which he described as “highly offensive” and “un-American.”

Not only was Cruz insulting to gays and women, Cuomo said, but his words were an affront to the country’s unofficial motto, “E pluribus unum,” or “Out of many, one.”

“That’s how he got here, by the way,” Cuomo said, referring to Cruz’s own childhood immigration to the U.S. “You think the sign said, ‘Only people from Canada who happen to come from Spanish and Irish descent’? We said everyone is welcome. It’s very disturbing on many levels, and hypocritical.”

Pointing to Cruz’s charge that New York is too focused on money, Cuomo added, “I’m sure now he won’t take a donation from anyone in New York, obviously.”

The New York Daily News made its opinion loud and clear, in a way only a New York City tabloid can: by placing a middle-finger-flipping Lady Liberty on the cover next to the big, bold words “Drop Dead, Ted.” In case there was any confusion as to how the paper feels about Cruz’s take on New York, a slightly smaller chunk of text at the bottom of the page reads, “Hey, Cruz: You don’t like N.Y. values? Go back to Canada!”

While the Daily News was telling Cruz to beat it, a former New York cop and 9/11 widower invited the Texas senator to come witness New York values for himself.

Jim Smith is a retired NYPD officer whose wife, fellow Officer Moira Smith was killed in the World Trade Center collapse after leading hundreds of injured people to safety on Sept. 11, 2001. According to the Daily Beast, Smith posted on Facebook that he was “disappointed” by Cruz’s “disparaging remarks about New York values somehow being different from Iowa and New Hampshire values.”

Smith then invited Cruz to “come to the National 9-11 Memorial and Museum and see for yourself, and perhaps learn something about the values of New Yorkers and the heroes who defended American values on September 11, 2001.”

Washington Post writer and lifelong New Yorker Philip Bump extended a very different kind of invitation to Cruz.

“I invite you to come to New York and live in a small apartment in an unfancy neighborhood for a month,” Bump wrote Thursday evening. “I invite you to come and figure out your favorite bodega and which train car to get in to optimize how quickly you can get back out of the station, and to wait in line for a doctor at one of the city’s many weird health-care facilities. I invite you to experience New York City and learn about New Yorkers, beyond the people who pay $2,700 to shake your hand or who offer you water in green rooms.”

One of the harshest reactions to Cruz’s comments came from fellow Republican Sen. Peter King, a conservative who was born in Manhattan and raised in Queens.

In a statement to CNN Thursday, King said, “Memo to Ted Cruz: New York Values are the heroes of 9/11; the cops who fight terror, and the people you ask for campaign donations. Go back under a rock.”

By Friday afternoon, hundreds of everyday New Yorkers had taken to Twitter to express what the city means to them using the Cruz-inspired trending hashtag #NewYorkValues.