I honestly don't know too much, and I lean far to the left, so salt grains. So I'm sorry - I'm not going to pretend to even try to be neutral. But basically, my family in Texas told me
He's responsible for some of the highest rates of job growth following the recession - but he basically did this by either handing out breaks to large minimum wage enterprises like walmart or McDonald's - or saw working-only kinds of welfare go into practise effectively subsidizing them by letting their employees live in wage slavery instead of having the natural market mechanisms force them into being more competitive on the labor market. If you care about living wages, or believe in wage slavery, he isn't your choice.
He's also presided over one of the most environmentally destructive governorships in history. Fracking and the damages caused have led to large earthquakes in places geologists thought to be some of the least earthquake prone places in the world. Oil's oil and everyone has an opinion on it, but generally the geographers I know characterize Texas's environmental policy as "get as much money as you can out of it and let the fed sort it out"
And... Texas isn't as far right as people think on average. But just like my home of California is ruled by corrupt, actually pretty evil garbage people on the "left", Texas is that of the right. And Cruz is pretty much emblematic of that rotten religious extremist blood oil neocon Texan stereotype. He'll have his finger on the nuke button praying for Armageddon. Or at least around as much as Bush 2.
Lastly - he's a former constitutional lawyer who thinks the first amendment only applies to Christians, and iirc put his signature behind voter id crap. If you're worried about a criminal president trying to evade the law - would you like the bad lawyer who's proven she's incompetent about hiding emails, a tv show presenter with no legal experience, a senile idealist, or a constitutional lawyer? Who's most likely to get themselves impeached? Or who's going to be most effective at getting legislation through?