Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) filed a complaint on Thursday with the Federal Election Commission, saying that his Democrat opponent Rep. Colin Allred (D-TX) illegally coordinated with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) to produce campaign ads against him that exceeded the limits allowed under federal election law.
Cruz claimed that four particular campaign ads constituted potentially millions of dollars in excessive in-kind contributions from DSCC to Allred.
“Colin Allred’s campaign is illegally coordinating with Chuck Schumer and the DSCC. We are calling on the FEC to immediately investigate and put a stop to this flagrant violation of federal law,” a spokesman for Cruz told the Daily Caller.
Allred is actually giving Cruz a run for his money in a very tight race where this sort of illegal activity could actually have an impact on the outcome.
According to Cruz, Allred and the DSCC are not following rules for "hybrid ads," which are supposed to spend half of their time plugging for or attacking "generically referenced" candidates. One of the ads in question talks about abortion but not generic candidates.
The other three ads attack Cruz and other Republicans in Texas but are still not generic enough, Cruz said.
It's going to be a hard one to win since the FEC has failed to penalize similar ads previously, including some from Republicans.
The panel deadlocked on a case brought by Democrats, which focused on ads about "extremists" and former President Donald Trump.
Because of the deadlock, the ads were allowed to continue and there was no consequence for Republicans.
This seems to indicate that the same would happen to Cruz.
“The DSCC is running the same kind of advertisements that the NRSC, the Republican National Committee and Republican members of the FEC all argued are legal - and that are being run by Republican Senate campaigns across the country. Ted Cruz is doing whatever he can to try and distract Texans from his support for a ban on all abortions and his self-serving politics,” Amanda Sherman Baity, a spokesperson for the DSCC, said in a statement.
In this case, it would be surprising if Cruz got a favorable ruling.
Party groups like to use hybrid ads because they can get them for lower rates through a candidate than through the group alone.
Both Democrats and Republicans in the Texas Senate race have spent roughly the allowed $2.8 million on the hybrid ads.
