WASHINGTON – A cluster of groups working to advance Republican Ted Cruz’s presidential ambitions is launching a new super PAC arm in the hopes of quickly boosting fundraising as the GOP nomination fight hurtles toward a crucial round of winner-take-all contests.
Four political action committees that all bear some version of the name, Keep the Promise, are forming a new fundraising super PAC, called Trusted Leadership PAC, ahead of a slew of March contests.
The move comes just days after GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump racked up wins in seven of the 11 Super Tuesday states. Cruz, however, scored a resounding victory in his delegate-rich home state of Texas and picked up neighboring Oklahoma and Alaska.
Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who has battled Cruz for the mantle of Trump’s chief rival, this week landed his first victory, Minnesota.
“We are pleased that with so many headwinds against him, we were able to help (Cruz) bring this to a two-person race,” said Kellyanne Conway, president of Keep the Promise I, one of the super PACs launching the new fundraising venture.
New York hedge-fund billionaire Robert Mercer provided $11 million to start Keep the Promise I, and the group has spent some $9.4 million ads and other voter outreach to boost Cruz’s candidacy, according to a tally of its spending by the non-partisan Campaign Finance Institute.
Conway said the Mercer-funded committee was never set up to raise money and has made “good on our promise to spend every dollar in support of Sen. Cruz’s quest for the nomination.”
But Tuesday’s results made it clear that the battle for the nomination could last until this summer’s Republican National Convention in Cleveland, and Cruz supporters are racing to replenish their coffers for the next round of high-stakes contests.Those include Rubio’s home state of Florida where 99 convention delegates will be up for grabs March 15, and advertising expenses will skyrocket as outside groups and the candidates compete for airtime in the state’s 10 media markets.
Three other super PACs — Keep the Promise PAC, Keep the Promise III and Keep the Promise to Veterans — also are joining the new venture and consolidating efforts.
Keep the Promise III received $15 million last year from Texas energy billionaires Farris and Dan Wilks and their wives and has focused on digital and social media campaigns. Keep the Promise to Veterans, meanwhile, is a super PAC launched last month with help from former Texas governor Rick Perry.
A fifth group, Keep the Promise II, seeded with $10 million from private-equity executive Toby Neugebauer, operates independently of all the others and has spent little of its money so far. It is not joining the new fundraising venture.
Neugebauer recently told The Washington Examiner that his super PAC is saving its resources for winner-take-all contests that dot the spring calendar and stretch into June.
Super PACs, which sprang into existence in 2010 after two federal court rulings, can raise and spend unlimited amounts of money but are barred from coordinating their activities with the candidates they support.The 2016 presidential race has seen the rise of a new trend: multiple super PACs, such as the Keep the Promise network of committees, which support a single candidate but each are funded by just a handful donors who help oversee strategy.
Aides say organizers of the four super PACs will help guide the new fundraising committee and also plan to continue to writing their own checks to help Cruz.
"Just as Republicans are coalescing in greater numbers to support Senator Cruz, the pro-Cruz super PACs understand that together we can be more effective and efficient in promoting the candidacy of Senator Cruz,” Allie Hanley, Trusted Leadership’s treasurer, said in a statement.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2016/03/04/ted-cruz-new-super-pac-trusted-leadership/81306006/
