Ted Cruz, that champion of the little guy, has some 'splainin' to do. The New York Times is reporting a blockbuster of a story about how he financed his Senate campaign.
According to Cruz, he turned to his wife (a Goldman Sachs employee) and said they needed to liquidate all their assets so he could do this thing. For the people and all that.
According to the Times, it was a little more complicated than that.
Those reports show that in the critical weeks before the May 2012 Republican primary, Mr. Cruz — currently a leading contender for his party’s presidential nomination — put “personal funds” totaling $960,000 into his Senate campaign. Two months later, shortly before a scheduled runoff election, he added more, bringing the total to $1.2 million — “which is all we had saved,” as Mr. Cruz described it in an interview with The New York Times several years ago.
Except they didn't really liquidate their savings at all. Instead, Cruz got a low interest loan of of $500,000 from Goldman Sachs, using his investments as equity, and additional loans from Citibank. All told, he borrowed between $750,000 and $1 million from the Big Banks to finance his Senate bid.
None of this would be awful, except for the fact that Cruz routinely uses his platform as candidate to claim he is a man of the people, who will stand up for those humble "white working voters" everywhere.
Even then it might not be awful, except for the fact that he "forgot" to disclose it.
A spokeswoman for Mr. Cruz’s presidential campaign, Catherine Frazier, acknowledged that the loan from Goldman Sachs, drawn against the value of the Cruzes’ brokerage account, was a source of money for the Senate race. Ms. Frazier added that Mr. Cruz also sold stocks and liquidated savings, but she did not address whether the Citibank loan was used.
The failure to report the Goldman Sachs loan, for as much as $500,000, was “inadvertent,” she said, adding that the campaign would file corrected reports as necessary. Ms. Frazier said there had been no attempt to hide anything.
“These transactions have been reported in one way or another on his many public financial disclosures and the Senate campaign’s F.E.C. filings,” she said.
Kenneth A. Gross, a former election commission lawyer who specializes in campaign finance law, said that listing a bank loan in an annual Senate ethics report — which deals only with personal finances — would not satisfy the requirement that it be promptly disclosed to election officials during a campaign.
Remember that bolded quote the next time Cruz or one of his Republican counterparts tries to slime Hillary Clinton with Clinton Foundation disclosures.
Cruz is a skilled politician who is playing his base like a violin, but he's not at all genuine.
