Report: iHM Supporting PAC Backing Senator Ted Cruz

U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz's office has repeatedly dismissed ethical questions about his three-times-a-week podcasting gig, saying he makes no money from the venture with a company that lobbies Congress. 

But The San Antonio News-Express reports over the last year, iHeartMedia, the massive radio compoany that picked up the "Verdict with Ted Cruz" podcast in 2022, has made regular, and growing, payments to a super PAC supporting the Texas Republican's reelection effort. The payments, which the media company says are associated with ad revenue from the podcast, total $630,850 — about a third of the $2 million the Truth and Courage PAC reported raising since the start of 2023, according to the latest Federal Election Commission data.

Ethics and campaign finance experts say the payments appear to be a novel arrangement that blur the lines between what is allowed under campaign finance law and Senate ethics rules. Cruz is the top Republican on the Senate Commerce Committee that oversees the communications industry. 

"This is not an arrangement we’ve seen before, and it seems like Sen. Cruz is trying to find a way to walk the lines between not falling into an ethics violation and not falling into a campaign finance violation," said Shanna Ports, senior legal counsel at the Campaign Legal Center, which filed an ethics complaint about the senator's podcast deal in 2022. 

The Truth and Courage PAC's stated focus is "ensuring that Ted Cruz is re-elected to the United States Senate in 2024." It has already started rolling out ads targeting U.S. Rep Colin Allred, the Dallas Democrat and former NFL player running against Cruz in one of the highest-profile races in the nation this November.

Cruz is seen as one of the only potentially vulnerable Republicans in the Senate after narrowly winning reelection in 2018. Cruz’s campaign has been warning donors that the senator is already tied with Allred in polling and bracing for a tougher 2024 reelection campaign than GOP voters might expect. 

Ports said the payments from iHeartMedia beg "the question of whether this is an unlawful contribution." Federal officeholders are prohibited from soliciting a contribution of over $5,000 to a super PAC or directing over $5,000 to a super PAC. So if Cruz told iHeartMedia that it could or should move money to the super PAC, he could be in violation of that law, Ports said.