- Ted Cruz received $555,000 from his campaign to repay old personal loans to the Senate committee.
- This is after Cruz challenged a law that restricted the amount candidates can repay.
- Some Supreme Court justices and ethics advocates warned against corruption.
According to new data, Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, received $555,000 from his campaign account in February. documents submitted to the Federal Election Commission.
The US Supreme Court is to be commended for the success of the former presidential candidate and second-term senator.
Cruz was a candidate for the United States Senate when he ran in 2012. He lent his campaign more than $1 millionin a heated primary against the then-Lt. Governor. David Dewhurst, Texas. Cruz would win the run-off against Dewhurst.
However, the 2002 Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act — championed by the late Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona — set a $250,000 limit on the amount of money that candidates could raise after the election for the purpose of paying off personal loans to their campaign committee.
Cruz effectively lost $545,000 in his own money following the campaign. The remaining loan amounts were converted into an in-kind contribution.
Six years later, Cruz chose to challenge the law after being confronted with an unexpectedly competitive reelection campaign in 2018 against former Rep. Beto O’Rourke. His campaign was loaned to him $260,000 — just $10,000 more than the limit — on November 5, just one day before the election.
This allowed Cruz to file a lawsuit against Federal Election Commission. It eventually reached the Supreme Court..
The Supreme Court ruled in May in a decision of 6-3. Ted Cruz for Senate: Federal Election Commission v. Ted CruzChief Justice John Roberts stated that the limit was illegal and that candidates were prohibited from lending money to campaigns. This burdened core speech.
That’s despite concerns not just from the three liberal justices who dissented, but from outside good-government groups — including Campaign Legal Center?, Brennan Center for Justice, Public Citizen, and Common Cause — that argued lifting the cap could fuel corruption by allowing campaign donors to essentially pay candidates directly by contributing to the repayment of their personal loans.
Trevor Potter, former Republican FEC chairman, is now president of the Campaign Legal Center. Statement that lifting the limit “gives an obvious and lamentable opening for special interests to purchase official favors and rig the political system in their favor.”
Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan reiterated the same argument in her Opinions that are not in agreement.
“It takes no political genius to see the heightened risk of corruption — the danger of ‘I’ll make you richer and you’ll make me richer’ arrangements between donors and officeholders,” she wrote. “By ignoring the statute, Court encourages self-interested, non-public-serving governance.”
Cruz and the other conservatives viewed this issue as a matter of freedom speech.
Insider was told by a Cruz spokesperson, that the payments were made in response to the May ruling. He stated that the court had declared a decisive 6-3 victory for First Amendment rights when it ruled that the restrictions violated the Constitution and restricted free speech.
And on August 5, Ted Cruz for Senate paid the senator $545,000 — the original amount that he’d been unable to recover after his 2012 primary campaign — along with the extra $10,000 he loaned his campaign in 2018.
Federal Election Commission
