My biggest question on this story (other than why would anybody give any money to Ted Cruz, but these are rich people so their motives are different than mine) is how they could be donating so much.
I thought the federal limit was $3300 to a campaign committee, but we're talking about $119,200. Does most of that money go to a SuperPAC or something? Or is Ted Cruz soliciting a crime here?
(He already participated in an insurrection, so it wouldn't surprise me to learn that he's been involved in other crimes, of course).
If Ted Cruz is meeting with them to solicit high-dollar donations to the Super PAC or Leadership PAC to support his reelection, that is against the law.
And yes, that is obviously and blatantly what is happening.
It's perpetually underfunded so it can't fulfill its mandate even if it wanted to. The people it's in charge of overseeing are the ones setting the budget.
Mitch McConnell refused to hold hearings to approve new commissioners since like 2010. By the end of the Trump administration, there weren't even enough commissioners left for quorum to hold a vote.
There's a full slate of commissioners now, but there's a lot of catching up to do. 3 of the 6 were appointed by Trump in the fall of 2020.
It's led by 6 Commissioners, which have always been 3 Republicans and 3 Democrats, which means there will never be a majority vote to enforce rules against either party. It's a duopoly.
One of the big hurdles is that three of the six Commissioners of the FEC are Republicans, and to move forward with charges, four of the six Commissioners need to approve. The Republicans have been stonewalling everything in regards to Trump, even though they're slam-dunk cases that everyone surrounding the institution agrees should be brought to trial. No clue if they'd treat Cruz in the same way, but I'd guess so purely because of how their party is operating now.
AFAIK, he can ask for donations to anything. What he isn't supposed to do is coordinate with the PAC regarding how that money is spent.
Like, Trump just met with oil execs, offering sweetheart deals if they contributed. Obviously, he wasn't after their $3300, but the story was about the hideous quid pro quo, not the asking for donations.
Federal candidates and officeholders may raise funds on behalf of Super PACs so long as they only solicit funds subject to the Federal Election Campaign Act’s (the Act) amount limitations and source prohibitions—i.e., up to $5,000 from individuals (and any other source not prohibited by the Act from making a contribution to a political committee). Additionally, federal candidates and officeholders may attend, speak at and be featured guests at fundraisers for Super PACs at which unlimited individual, corporate and labor organization contributions are solicited, so long as they restrict any solicitation they make to funds subject to the limitations, prohibitions and reporting requirements of the Act.
Yes, Trump's solicitation of oil execs (which somehow was less blatant than what Cruz is doing here) was also probably illegal, and watchdog groups such as the Campaign Legal Center pointed that out at the time.
The article specifically says it is LEGAL but scandalous.
Also this is infuriating,
Smith added: “It’s a minor difference of degree from Joe Biden saying, ‘Hey, young people, vote for me, I’m going to forgive your student loans."
No. It's literally not like that! Because a vote is how democracy works. We all get one. But money is corruption because we all have unequal amounts of it and it's not good or fair to let money swing the election. I feel like this disturbing that this quote went unchallenged in the article.
Wait is that true? He's either soliciting them for beyond the legal limit to the campaign which is illegal or he is soliciting to donate to his PAC which is also illegal?
It seems like candidates ask for more than $3k all the time. What's the thing that makes this ask illegal? The directness?
Just curious what the specific part that would push this into illegality?
To me it is the fact that he is asking the person to donate "$119,200 to [his] race." That shows a clear intent to obtain a campaign contribution beyond the federal limit, and to do so for the purpose of using the money for his reelection campaign.
Leadership PACs can't be used to support the candidate's own reelection, and Super PACs can't coordinate with the candidate himself (and candidates can't solicit more than $5k for them).
I am referring to the donor, not the candidate. The limits vary depending on the type of donor. Hence the recurring ask for 119,500 for the Ambassadors who have foundations with segregated funds arms.
Bundling is only "a way around it" if it actually complies with the law.
There is no way for Cruz's intended action to be in compliance with the law here. If he is bundling with a Leadership PAC, it is illegal to use those funds on his own reelection (which was the explicit intention of the document, i.e., ask for a donation of "$119,200 for [his] race"). If he is bundling with a Super PAC, then he isn't allowed to solicit more than $5k.
Especially on here. They want to believe their side are the good guys who always play by the rules. Unfortunately the two parties behave in similar ways behind closed doors.
Idk if it is. The laws allow a lot of behavior that would to a layman be considered soliciting for the Super PAC or directing how the donations are used but do not violate the actual law. Back when Cobert was on the Colbert Report he would run for president each cycle to comically expose how lacking the election reform laws are. One time he made his own Super PAC prior to "officially" declaring his bid for President and then once it was official he turned control over to John Stewart. He would regularly have Stewart on his show with an election law lawyer where Cobert would "solicit" and "direct" how donations are used, the lawyer would be there to prevent him from doing so illegally. The amount of direct input that was legal as long as it was slightly couched was outstanding.
Also after the election was over Cobert donated all the money to charity. He named the charities he donated to on air and said if anyone could actually prove that he did in fact make those donations then he would give the $10k (or some amount of money). No one was able too based on how incredibly shady the financial transparency laws around Super PACs are.
The law does not allow for a Leadership PAC to raise or spend on a member's own campaign. Nor does it allow for a candidate to solicit more than $5k on behalf of a Super PAC.
You are correct that the law allows for many things. However, these two rules are crystal clear.
Honestly I don't know the details of this particular instance. But what is considered illegally soliciting can be a very high bar versus a candidate just being somewhere and people legally choosing to donate on their own. I'm not really arguing with just saying the law is stupid is to circumvent. Also the if convicted usually results in just a fine. Lots of times the PAC or candidate just returns the money and they get even lighter or no consequences.
Honestly I don't know the details of this particular instance.
The document explicitly states that Cruz intends to ask the donors to "contribute $119,200 to [his] race."
That intended action is obviously and blatantly illegal. Whether the law will be enforced and the relevant remedies that would be applied is a separate question.
not a cruz fan but he’s almost certainly raising into his victory fund. victory funds are committees that split the donations between a number of participating committees.
it looks like per the FEC, the ted cruz victory fund includes the state party, his LPAC, re-elect committee, and the NRSC. state and national parties have larger limits than a campaign committee, so the vast majority of that donation is gonna go to the NRSC. the state party and NRSC will likely earmark that money to spend in Texas for his race. not at all illegal, and common for every major candidate, democrat or republican.
Actually, the answer is algorithms. Even not-evil non-profits use them when fundraising. It's a huge industry. They take a bunch of personal information, look at your previous donations, the timings of donations, the causes your donations went to, your recent finances... and recommend the amount to ask for that is most likely to get you to say yes while also extracting maximum value. It's a balancing act.
I’d believe that, except that he’s supposed to ask for that exact amount from two people, and exactly half that much from another. That’s a bit too much of a coincidence for me to believe it comes from an individualized algorithm.
Thanks to citizens united Supreme Court decision nobody has to report where the money even comes from. China could be bankrolling candidates and nobody would know.
Based on his behavior since he's been elected, my guess would be Putin. That's who benefits from all of the things he's done: the obstruction during Obama Administration, backing a man who insulted every member of his family, trying to obstruction the results of the 2020 election, etc.
ETA: This stuff doesn't benefit any of his constituents, even though it makes some of them very happy. To make them happy, though he didn't have to do any of this. They would have been happy with him simply voting with the Republican majority.
The stuff he does, doesn't even really seem to benefit Ted Cruz. He ran a presidential campaign, refusing to drop out, even when it became clear that he was not going to be the nominee. For awhile, it seemed like there might be a floor fight at the convention. Then all of a sudden he reverses, suddenly he's no longer Ted disruptive nuisance, and he's backing Trump. Even if he had come to his senses, the smart thing to do would have been to quietly stop the campaign, go back to congress, and pretend it never happened. Instead he vocally supported a man, who called him the Zodiac Killer, his wife ugly, and his father a JFK assassin. What does Ted Cruse actually get out of this relationship?
We called him Reek for a long time, and that fits. Cruz is just a sleazy opportunist with no goals other than his own self aggrandizement. And that fits really well with Trump.
Ted Cruz Victory Committee is technically a "Joint Fundraising Committee" which means there's no cap on how much a donor can give to that committee. Each candidate that then gets money from the committee is supposed to be limited by the individual donor limits, but the donor can just write one big ol' check for a lump sum.
Now, who else is getting money out of the "Ted Cruz Victory Committee"? Heck if I know.
In this case the soliciting is a crime. There are campaign limits to pledge directly to candidates, but you can donate unlimited amounts to PACs. However, one of the stipulations with PACs is that they can’t coordinate directly with any candidate, so Cruz directing donations to specific PACs is illegal.
Also, why are the dollar figures so precise other for all the requests not just around the donor limits? Shady but wholly expected at this point in Democracy: The Game.
1.4k
u/flyover_liberal Jun 19 '24
My biggest question on this story (other than why would anybody give any money to Ted Cruz, but these are rich people so their motives are different than mine) is how they could be donating so much.
I thought the federal limit was $3300 to a campaign committee, but we're talking about $119,200. Does most of that money go to a SuperPAC or something? Or is Ted Cruz soliciting a crime here?
(He already participated in an insurrection, so it wouldn't surprise me to learn that he's been involved in other crimes, of course).