In complaint, Ted Cruz says Democrats broke campaign finance laws to help Colin Allred

U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, speaks during the Texas GOP Convention on May 25 in San Antonio. (Credit: Eli Hartman/The Texas Tribune)

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WASHINGTON — Sen. Ted Cruz accused national Democrats on Thursday of illegally exceeding contribution limits to his opponent U.S. Rep. Colin Allred’s campaign.

But Democrats say they’re simply doing what Republicans have been doing in their ads.

Cruz alleged that the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee (DSCC) illegally spent more than $10 million for television ads in Texas benefiting Allred. The Federal Election Commission (FEC) allows national party groups to spend roughly $2.8 million in coordination with Senate candidates in Texas, an amount based on the state’s voting population. Party groups prefer doing ads in coordination with candidates because candidates enjoy cheaper rates than outside spending groups.

National party groups can exceed the coordinated spending limit through “hybrid ads,” which must devote half of the time of each ad for “generically referenced candidates.” Just what that entails has been a source of contention within the FEC and the basis of Cruz’s complaint.

Cruz’s complaint focuses on four ads by the Allred campaign and the DSCC. One of the ads dedicates roughly half of its time to abortion, featuring Kate Cox, a Texas woman who had to leave the state to terminate her nonviable pregnancy. Cruz asserts that the ad does not include any references to “generically referenced candidates” and therefore does not follow FEC guidance. The other ads include references to Cruz “and extremists” featuring images of Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, but Cruz asserts that is not enough to constitute an attack on “generically referenced candidates.”

But in a recent ruling, the FEC failed to determine whether similar cases violated the law. In an Oct. 10 ruling on a complaint by Democrats, the FEC deadlocked on whether references to “greedy politicians” or former President Donald Trump constitute “a reference to generic candidates of the Republican Party, allocable as party advocacy.”

A deadlock effectively allows candidates to continue as they had prior to the ruling.

The recent FEC ruling was in response to a complaint by the DSCC over Republicans' frequent use of hybrid ads to get lower rates.

“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.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) has paid for ads with Republican candidates in other states that spent half of the air time on issues. In Arizona, an ad by the NRSC and Republican candidate Kari Lake spends half of its time discussing drugs on the border and the other half attacking Democrat Ruben Gallego. Ads in Nevada and Maryland spend half of their time going after “politicians”.

The NRSC has spent roughly $2.8 million on ads with the Cruz campaign, according to tracking firm AdImpact.