One of the most interesting races in the 2018 slate of elections is the contest between incumbent GOP Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and Democratic Congressman Beto O’Rourke, who has been dubbed a “Democratic darling.”
However, when CBSN anchor Elaine Quijano reported that Cruz had raised $3.2 million during the first quarter of 2018 and O’Rourke got $6.7 million, more than twice that amount, she asked Scott Braddock of The Quorum Report if the Democratic challenger would be able to keep pace “when outside money starts rolling in.”
Braddock quickly rained on her parade: “The short answer is ‘No.’ ... Let’s be real here. This is Texas.”
Quijano began the segment by calling the election “what could be Texas’s most competitive U.S. Senate race in more than a decade.”
She then turned to Braddock, whom she described as the editor of a “political newsletter” known as The Quorum Report, and stated that O’Rourke is “bringing in a lot of money to his campaign, but he’s made a point of not accepting money from Super PACs.”
“Ted Cruz, on the other hand, is expected to gain Super PAC support this fall,” the anchor continued. “Will O’Rourke, you think, be able to keep pace with Cruz when the outside money starts rolling in?”
Braddock responded: “The short answer is ‘No.'” He continued:
Congressman O’Rourke is doing pretty well in raising money from small donors. It’s kind of like Bernie Sanders’ money machine.
You know, lots of people who are giving $5, $25, that sort of thing, and people can of course give that much money more than once, which means that he has, you know, a large donor base to go back to to continue to raise money going into the fall.
“But let’s be real here. This is Texas,” the analyst stated, “and the Republican Party‘s going to show up in a big way in Texas, and it doesn’t really need money from outside of this state to have a big influence.”
“You have the governor, who has about $50, ‘5-0’ million in the bank and his campaign account, and he’s an ally of Senator Cruz,” who is “going to have probably somewhere between $15 and $20 million to spend from his campaign and across allied organizations once it’s all said and done.”
Braddock continued: “Basically, when you’re talking about those sorts of numbers, and the governor and Senator Cruz are telling people to get out and vote Republican, and they’re using the sort of specter of the ‘Blue Wave’ all across the country as their way to fire up the Republicans -- maybe counter-intuitively -- they will be able to deploy huge resources while Democrats will basically be, by comparison, rubbing nickels together.”
Quijano then tried to change the subject by asking about Senator Cruz’s messaging: “How has it evolved since President Trump entered the White House?”
“Interesting that it hasn’t evolved all that much,” Braddock replied. “You have Senator Cruz doing basically the same thing he did back in 2016, when he was running against Donald Trump.”
“And of course, then he lost and flamed out at the Republican National Convention,” the analyst continued. “When Senator Cruz was onstage” at the convention, “he got a huge standing ovation there, and then, he was basically booed off the stage because he wouldn’t get behind Donald Trump.”
“And then,” the guest stated, “he basically cratered with the people who were still hanging with him -- the people who respected Senator Cruz for not endorsing Donald Trump -- but then, when he endorsed Trump eventually, he lost those people, too.”
Braddock then referred to “self-identified Republicans, Democrats or Independents in this state, which in Texas breaks down a third, a third and a third.”
Those numbers, he continued, show that “the Senator has started to sort of make up with those Republicans.”
“Of course, Democrats still despise him, and that’s contributing to the big numbers you mentioned for Congressman O’Rourke,” Braddock noted. “With Independents, he continues to be pretty weak, and that’s where Congressman O’Rourke has his best opportunity.”
As NewsBusters reported on February 20, The New York Times “is searching everywhere, even Texas, for candidates to dislodge the Republicans from Congress in November, by trumpeting any Democrat,” including O’Rourke, whose campaign Is all about “the sense of the possible.”
Two months later, Times columnist Frank Bruni continued the crusade by describing O’Rourke as “the alternative to Ted Cruz,” who is even “Kennedyesque.”
Braddock probably won’t be a guest in the mainstream media again anytime soon since liberals would rather talk with people who won’t disagree with them but instead subscribe to their mantra of returning control of Congress to their fellow Democrats.
