Ted Cruz, iHeartMedia, and a Wild Spending Spree
By Thomas Anderson
The Ted Cruz Super PAC called Truth and Courage PAC has been embroiled in a simmering campaign finance controversy where Cruz has literally sidestepped campaign finance laws that prevent corporations from directly donating to a politician’s reelection effort. It’s so bad BP America has just come out to publicly denounce what Cruz has done and has asked iHeartMedia to pull all of their advertising money from the Ted Cruz podcast ‘Verdict’. It’s a brazen move by Cruz that calls into question the effectiveness and viability of our campaign finance laws and their implementation. It’s also a move that hints at a certain level of desperation that appears to be on display within the Truth and Courage PAC FEC filings. Especially a set of disbursements that can only be described as a wild binge or spending spree.
The one conversation that is rarely heard in the corridors of power in Washington DC is campaign finance law reform. It’s the elephant in the room in today’s world of hyper-partisan politics that are increasingly becoming nothing more than bitter exchanges of soundbite talking points on social media. It’s in this upside-down world that members of the Senate, like Ted Cruz, create unique ways to funnel corporate cash into their political machines and reelection bids. For elected officials like Cruz, it’s not a matter of where to go to get the money, it’s how to creatively finesse the system to let more money in than the law allows. Cruz has not only found a new way to finesse cash into his political machine and reelection effort through iHeartMedia podcast revenue, but he’s also using a unique accounting trick to funnel it out of his Super Pac without having to declare where the money is truly going.
Since March of 2023 Cruz has received over $600k in ad revenue from iHeartMedia into his ‘Verdict’ podcast which collects the money as payments to the Cruz-affiliated Super Pac Truth and Courage PAC. In approximately the same time frame the Truth and Courage Super PAC has paid an LLC over $500k in political strategy consulting/travel payments. There is a set of complicated laws governing how much money can be paid to outside consultants, mainly concerning industry averages and historical disbursement ranges for services provided. The problem for the Cruz Super Pac is the LLC they’ve loaded with over a half million dollars in consulting fees has never worked for a campaign committee in the past for political consulting. The fees paid are also outrageous where the Super PAC pays the LLC the same amount to the penny for travel as it does political consulting:
