Pro-Cruz super PAC

Cruz's silent super PACs a growing worry for campaign

Four pro-Cruz super PACs are sitting on huge sums of money, but have run virtually no TV ads so far.

By Shane Goldmacher

The super PACs backing Cruz’s presidential run have yet to reserve any TV time in the early primary states – or anywhere else – despite a combined $38 million warchest that ranks second only to Jeb Bush’s $103 million operation.

The total absence of ads has created confusion and growing consternation inside the Cruz campaign, which cannot legally communicate with its allied super PACs and has had to watch as their rivals lock in tens of millions of dollars in ads before prices spike, as they typically do as elections near.

“I assume they’re waiting so their media buyers make the highest commission,” one Cruz adviser quipped.

While most 2016 candidates have one main super PAC backing them, the Cruz super PACS are a decentralized alliance of four independent but interconnected operations, each called some version of “Keep the Promise.” People familiar with the groups say they were designed that way to cater to the different big donors funding them.

Hedge fund manager Robert Mercer gave $11 million to one. Energy investor Toby Neugebauer gave $10 million to another. And the families of Dan and Farris Wilks, brothers who became billionaires in the Texas fracking boom, gave $15 million to a third.

Despite those huge sums virtually no Cruz TV ads have aired yet (a single ad ran during the Iowa-Iowa State football game in September) – and none are reserved yet. In contrast, outside groups backing Rubio and Bush are sitting on more than $50 million in reservations through the primaries, according to media trackers. Plus, millions in pro-Bush, pro-John Kasich, pro-Chris Christie and pro-Bobby Jindal ads have already aired.

Laura Barnett, spokeswoman for the Keep for Promise alliance, said booking TV time was “totally not even on my radar.”

“Based on the response from [the] debate, where Senator Cruz talked about what the moderators were asking and the questions they were posing to the candidates, we’ve seen a tremendous amount of earned media…” Barnett said. “We’re going to ride that wave as long as we can.”

Cruz is trying to establish himself as a top conservative contender for the nomination, but he will likely eventually need some cover on the airwaves from his super PACs.

Kellyanne Conway, who runs the Mercer-funded Keep the Promise I group, said some TV ads are in production and brushed aside talk of limited inventory or spiking prices. Her group, she noted, is already airing more targeted radio ads on conservative talk and Christian radio, as part of a $1 million buy through the end of the year. They are doing digital ads, as well.

“I can reserve money [for TV ads] when I hang up with you,” she said.

But the price difference for super PACs, especially those that wait, can be enormous. On KCCI in Des Moines, for instance, Rubio’s campaign has reserved a 30-second spot on the 10pm evening news the Friday before the Iowa caucuses for $750, Federal Communications Commission records show. Bush’s super PAC has reserved a 30-second ad on the same broadcast for $5,000 because there are no federal limits on what super PACs can be charged. And the super PAC ad rate is almost universally expected to rise.

“I don’t need to be defensive. I’m sitting on lots of money and I intend to spend every last dollar of it,” Conway added. She said the goal was to be more surgical, spending on digital, cable, direct mail, radio in addition to TV. She pointed to the Bush super PAC, which has spent more than $10 million already on ads, “Where has that gotten them?” she asked. “They did move, but they moved down.”

Conway’s group has been far more active than the other pro-Cruz groups. Keep the Promise II and III, which have $25 million between them, have so far reported spending less than $50,000 on independent expenditures to help Cruz. David Barton, an influential evangelical leader, is also involved in setting the strategy for the Cruz super PACs but was unavailable for interview.

An internal document from the Cruz super PACs suggests they did not originally intend to wait so long to go on air. A PowerPoint presentation appealing to donors, posted on the group’s website over the summer and since taken offline, said that Keep the Promise would roll “out a positive campaign in key primary states around the first debate.”

That never happened.

The same presentation warned that “television rates start to skyrocket in December making it impossible for candidates to define themselves and their views so therefore are defined by the Media.”

Cruz’s campaign has tried to send signals to the super PACs in the hopes that they would air ads to introduce Cruz to the electorate. Over the summer, the campaign posted on YouTube hours of unedited, glowing testimonials from Cruz’s family telling soft-focus stories about a senator known mostly for his stridency. It amounted to a public plea for the super PACs to use the footage. Yet no such ads have aired.

“If they don’t, we will,” another Cruz official said of using the footage in introductory ads. “We’re going to tell some of those stories, not just the footage that we put out but footage that we shot here recently. We’re going to tell that story.”

Conway said they had looked into using the video clips – “I love that footage,” she said – but ran into legal issues. In an era in which numerous campaigns are driving aggressively through loopholes in campaign-finance law, the lawyers at least Cruz’s super PAC tapped the brakes. Larry Levy, an attorney for Keep the Promise I, said he believed repackaging clips produced by the campaign would amount to a violation.

“Taking that material and turning it into pro-Cruz ads seemed to me, as my judgment as a lawyer, would be an improper use of campaign resources and any ad we made out of it would constitute an improper contribution to the Cruz campaign,” Levy said. “I admit I am a lawyer who does not recommend dancing over the line,” he added.

Cruz himself was hands-off about his outside support. “I can genuinely answer I have no idea what the super PAC is going to do or what their strategy is,” Cruz told POLITICO a week ago. “That is the nature of this idiotic system we have under federal law.”

As for his own campaign spending plans, Cruz likened it to the Mel Gibson movie scene “where the other army is advancing and they keep saying ‘Hold, hold, hold.’ We are saving our resources very deliberately to use where they have the maximum impact.”