Cruz Violates Campaign Finance Law - Retains Race Lead

Where does the U.S. Senate race in Texas stand? Can Democrat Beto O'Rourke really unseat Republican Ted Cruz? Frankly, It's anyone's guess right now. There have been only four polls done on the race in the last couple of months, and they are all over the place -- placing the gap between the candidates at somewhere between 5 and 11 points.

The RealClearPolitics average of the polls (which is usually more accurate than any single poll) has the gap at 8.2 points (Cruz 47% - O'Rourke 38.8% - Unsure/Other 14.2%). That would mean O'Rourke has a chance, but more work must be done -- and there would need to be a huge turnout of urban voters, young voters, and voters in South Texas.

My attitude may be rather pollyannish, but I think O'Rourke has a chance to pull off a minor miracle in November -- a better chance than Democrats have had in a couple of decades. It won't be easy though. The state party needs to get behind O'Rourke 100% with funding, registration efforts, and a huge GOTV effort.

Meanwhile, Cruz has violated federal campaign contributions law for a third time. He may need to do that because he's trailing O'Rourke badly in campaign contributions. Here's how those Cruz campaign violations are described by Rachel Cohrs in The Dallas Morning News:

Sen. Ted Cruz’s Senate campaign committee has received three letters from the Federal Election Commission this election cycle for accepting campaign contributions that exceeded federal limits.

The FEC sent the “Ted Cruz for Senate” committee letters in September, April and June. . . .

Brett Kappel works on FEC compliance cases as an attorney, and said it is rare for Senate campaigns to receive repeated notices of contribution limit violations. However, he said the letters to Cruz’s committee have been from the FEC’s reporting analysis division, not its enforcement division.

“Normally it’s not a significant factor, but in some cases it can become an issue,” Kappel said. “They’re not there yet.”

The letters named dozens of individuals and one political action committee that gave to the Cruz campaign above the $2,700 individual contribution limit per election and the annual $5,000 PAC limit.

Cruz’s committee responded to the first two FEC inquiries by reattributing donations to donors’ spouses, redesignating contributions from the primary to general election race, returning money to Cruz’s joint fundraising committee, and refunding some donations.

These are legal methods of complying with campaign finance law. . . .

Part of the reason for Cruz’s reported excessive contributions could be the structure of online contributing on his website.

Donors are enrolled to give automatic monthly contributions unless they opt out. These monthly payments may not stop when contribution limits are reached. . . .

Brendan Fischer, the director of federal reform for the Campaign Legal Center, said the Cruz campaign committee’s citations were unusual because some individuals exceeded limits in more than one instance.

“They should have the controls in place to stop the automatic donations when the limits are reached,” Fischer said.

Cruz’s challenger in November, El Paso Democrat Beto O’Rourke, has not received notices from the FEC flagging excessive contributions.