Texas Sen. Ted Cruz (R) vented his frustration with the Senate Management Fund, a brilliant PAC aligned with Senate Republican Chief Mitch McConnell (Ky.), for not spending any cash in his aggressive reelection race, accusing McConnell of utilizing the group to “punish” his critics within the Senate GOP convention.
“Mitch McConnell runs the largest Republican super PAC in the country and has $400 million but that super PAC is used to reward the Republican senators who obey him and to punish those who dare to stand up him,” Cruz informed conservative discuss present host Mark Levin throughout a current interview.
Requested if McConnell or the PAC had put any cash into his more and more shut race in opposition to Democratic Rep. Colin Allred (Texas), Cruz replied: “Not a penny.”
The distinguished Texas conservative stated the identical factor occurred in 2018, when he barely beat Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-Texas), who outspent him by a big margin.
“In 2018 I was in what was at the time the most expensive Senate race in U.S. history. I was being outspent 3-to-1. He had $300 million, he spent zero in Texas. I won anyway but barely, by less than 3 points,” Cruz stated, referring to McConnell and the Senate Management Fund.
“This time around he has $400 million. I’m being massively outspent again. [Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.)] is spending millions. And yet he spent zero,” he added, referring to McConnell.
The Democratic Senatorial Marketing campaign Committee (DSCC) introduced final month it will launch a multimillion-dollar tv promoting marketing campaign concentrating on Cruz.
Cruz has famously battled with McConnell over time, most lately over the bipartisan border safety deal that McConnell helped negotiate. He says the Senate Management Fund is leaving him excessive and dry due to his private clashes with the GOP chief.
“People wonder at home, ‘How come no Republicans stand up and have courage and stand up to Mitch and leadership?’ And the answer is if you stand up and say ‘no,’ it costs you $10 or $20 or $30 [million], or even $40 million,” Cruz informed Levin, the host of “Life, Liberty and Levin” on Fox Information.
McConnell is prohibited by marketing campaign finance legislation from directing the spending selections of the Senate Management Fund, however he has raised greater than $1 billion for the group because it began, and Republican senators consider he has numerous oblique affect over what races it chooses to help.
Steven Regulation, McConnell’s former chief of workers, is the CEO of the Senate Management Fund.
McConnell informed The Hill in February that he doesn’t play favorites with regards to making selections about which candidates to help in an election 12 months. He says his political selections are solely pushed by what he thinks will greatest assist Republicans management a Senate majority.
However Cruz says McConnell and the Senate Management Fund didn’t assist two different conservative critics of McConnell’s management fashion, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) and Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), in 2016 and 2022, respectively.
He stated that Johnson “had a very tough, competitive race” in 2016, and “Mitch spent zero to support him.”
And he argued that Lee confronted an unexpectedly powerful problem from unbiased Evan McMullin however didn’t get any help from the McConnell-aligned tremendous PAC.
Johnson gained his 2016 race in opposition to former Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) by 3 factors, and Lee gained his 2022 reelection contest by greater than 10 factors.
Regulation informed The Wall Road Journal that the Senate Management Fund felt assured Cruz and Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), one other McConnell critic who faces a tricky reelection race this fall, would in the end prevail.
“I think we’ll be OK in both of them,” he stated of the Texas and Florida Senate races. “This is a presidential cycle. Neither one of those states is going to be on the radar of the Democrats.”
He made his remark earlier than the DSCC introduced its promoting buys in Texas and Florida. The Senate Democratic marketing campaign arm, nevertheless, shouldn’t be anticipated to spend quite a lot of million {dollars} in every state, though it hasn’t disclosed its plans intimately.
