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Texas Sen. Ted Cruz (R) vented his frustration with the Senate Leadership Fund (SLF), a super PAC aligned with Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.), for not spending any money in his competitive re-election race, accusing McConnell of using the group to “punish” his critics in the Senate GOP conference.
“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 told conservative talk-show host Mark Levin during a recent interview.
Asked if McConnell or SLF had put any money into his increasingly close race against Democratic Rep. Colin Allred (D-Texas), Cruz replied: “Not a penny.”
The prominent Texas conservative said the same thing happened in 2018, when he barely beat Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-Texas), who outspent him by a large margin.
“In 2018 I was in what was at the time the most expensive senate race in U.S. history. I was being outspent 3-1. He had $300 million, he spent zero in Texas. I won anyway but barely, by less than three points,” Cruz said, referring to McConnell and SLF.
“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 Campaign Committee (DSCC) announced last month it would launch a multi-million-dollar television advertising campaign targeting Cruz.
Cruz has famously battled with McConnell over the years, most recently over the bipartisan border security deal that McConnell helped negotiate. He says SLF is leaving him high and dry because of his personal clashes with the GOP leader.
“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 [million] or $20 [million] or $30 [million] or even $40 million,” Cruz told Levin, the host of “Life, Liberty and Levin” on Fox News.
McConnell is prohibited by campaign finance law from directing the spending decisions of SLF, but he has raised more than $1 billion for the group since it started and Republican senators believe he has a lot of indirect influence over what races it chooses to support.
Steven Law, McConnell’s former chief of staff, is the CEO of SLF.
McConnell told The Hill in February that he doesn’t play favorites when it comes to making decisions about which candidates to support in an election year. He says his political decisions are entirely driven by what he thinks will best help Republicans control a Senate majority.
But Cruz says McConnell and SLF didn’t help two other conservative critics of McConnell’s leadership style, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), and Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), in 2016 and 2022 respectively.
He said that Johnson “had a very tough, competitive race” in 2016 and “Mitch spent zero to support him.”
And he argued that Lee faced an unexpectedly tough challenge from independent Evan McMullin but didn’t get any support from the McConnell-aligned super PAC.
Johnson won his 2016 race against former Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) by 3 points and Lee won his 2022 re-election contest by more than 10 points.
Law told The Wall Street Journal that SLF felt confident Cruz and Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), another McConnell critic who faces a tough re-election race this fall, would ultimately prevail.
“I think we’ll be OK in both of them,” he said 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 comment before the DSCC announced its advertising buys in Texas and Florida. The Senate Democratic campaign arm, however, is not expected to spend more than a few million in each state, although it hasn’t disclosed its plans in detail.
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