Top GOP Donors — How Cruz Won Support
Ted Cruz’s emergence as one of the most prolific fundraisers in the Republican field is one of the biggest surprises of this election season.
He’s been in the race for only two months, but Jeb Bush has already spent more than $275,000 on private air travel. Nearly $350,000 has gone to FP1 Strategies, the firm that houses Bush’s campaign manager, Danny Diaz, and another consultant, and which is performing other services for the former Florida governor. While most presidential candidates and their staffers spend years on the campaign trail living out of suitcases in two-star hotels, the Bush team on one occasion shelled out for a stay at the Mandarin Oriental in Miami.
Bush is by no means alone. Even Rick Perry’s struggling campaign, which has stopped paying its staffers, found the money in June to spend nearly $60,000 on private air travel. Perry’s campaign manager, Jeff Miller, says the charter jet flew military veterans supporting the governor, including Navy SEAL Marcus Luttrell, on an introductory campaign swing through Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina.
Miller’s consulting firm, Abstract Communications, has also netted $391,000, more than half of all the money spent by the campaign, according to Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings. Miller says that money was for consulting services and for video production, fundraising, and Web development, among other services.
Then there’s Ted Cruz, who has told would-be donors that this is precisely the sort of wasteful spending he will not indulge in. He has promised, says a source, not to “run a traditional campaign with a bunch of D.C. consultants who are fleecing donors out of their money.” It’s a key part of Cruz’s pitch to top-dollar donors, a handful of whom have committed millions of dollars to a cluster of super PACs supporting the Texas senator’s campaign, making him an unexpectedly potent force in the Republican primary.
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Source: Top GOP Donors — How Cruz Won Support | National Review Online
