Why Ted Cruz is again raising campaign finance concerns

In 2022, iHeartMedia entered a corporate deal involving Sen. Ted Cruz's (R-TX) "Verdict" podcast and Truth and Courage — a super PAC supporting the far-right GOP senator.

In an article published Monday, Daily Beast reporters Roger Sollenberger and Mini Racker laid out some reasons why they believe this "cloudy" arrangement raises issues from a campaign finance standpoint, even though it appears to be technically legal.

"Since last March," Sollenberger and Racker wrote, "the podcast has generated about $630,000 in advertising revenue for the super PAC, with another roughly $3,500 trickling in from Google. Importantly, the law prohibits coordination between candidates — who are limited by how much money they can raise — and super PACs, which can raise unlimited amounts of money from individuals and corporations.

“Federal law states that a federal candidate or officeholder — ‘or an entity directly or indirectly established, financed, maintained or controlled by or acting on behalf of one or more candidates or individuals holding Federal office' — shall not 'solicit, receive, direct, transfer, or spend funds' in connection with a federal election outside of the limits and reporting requirements of federal election law."

The journalists add, "Put simply, a candidate can't raise any corporate money — let alone hundreds of thousands of dollars of it — into a super PAC.

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Experts on campaign finance laws, according to Sollenberger and Racker, "told The Daily Beast that even if Cruz isn't breaking the law, he's certainly testing the limits."

Technically, they note, Cruz isn't "raising" money for Truth and Courage, but is earning it. And the arrangement with iHeart Media, they stress, "raises a prospect entirely unique to Cruz: that a super PAC can essentially moonlight as a media company."

Jordan Libowitz, communications director for the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), told the Beast, "What seems to be going on here is he's treating this political group not through the standard fundraising that it would do, but instead, basically treating it as business — and that it's making money off of his podcast, as if it were just making money off of selling t-shirts. It's so wild it's never occurred to someone to do this before. The traditional way is: find rich people and ask them for money. And that's been pretty successful over the years."

One of the closely watched U.S. Senate races of 2024 involves Cruz, who is seeking a third term and is being challenged by Democrat Colin Allred.

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Texas is a red state, although it is arguably light red rather than deep red at this point. Although Texas Democrats typically struggle in statewide races, a University of Texas, Tyler poll released in early March found Cruz and Allred in a dead heat.

However, a Marist College poll that came out on March 26 showed Cruz ahead by 6 percent.

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