Ted Cruz’s presidential campaign has asked Iowa radio stations to stop airing attack ads that label him a “hypocrite.”
America’s Renewable Future, a bipartisan political group that supports ethanol mandates, is responsible for the radio ads that claim the Texas senator “supports Big Oil instead of Iowa farmers.” The Cruz campaign argues that the ads’ content is demonstrably inaccurate.
“It is blatantly false to suggest that Sen. Cruz wants to end the Renewable Fuel Standard while maintaining subsidies for oil,” said Rick Tyler, a Cruz spokesman, in a statement. “Cruz has repeatedly stated that he would end all energy specific subsidies, both ethanol and oil among others.”
Eric S. Brown, Cruz’s general counsel, sent a letter reminding the radio stations of their “legal responsibility” as an FCC licensee to “avoid deliberate misrepresentations and intentional libel.”
“Your failure, as an FCC licensee, to fulfill this obligation, may be deemed an ‘underlying abdication’ of your duties as such a licensee and result in the loss of your station’s license,” the letter states. “With this letter, Cruz for President reserves all rights, remedies and recourse to which we are entitled in connection with the potential or actual broadcast of the advertisement referenced herein.”
While the Cruz campaign found the attack ads deplorable, Cruz’s team struck at rival GOP presidential candidate Marco Rubio on the same issue of energy subsidies. Tyler used a statement excoriating the attack ads from America’s Renewable Future to also whack Rubio.
“While Cruz stands consistently in support of the free market, Sen. Rubio champions corporate giveaways like the RFS [Renewable Fuel Standard] and sugar subsidies that pick winners and losers in order to enrich lobbyists at the expense of the American taxpayer,” Tyler said in a statement.
Cruz, who ranks second in the Washington Examiner‘s newest presidential power rankings, finished statistically tied for the top spot in a Quinnipiac University survey of Iowa — ahead of the Florida senator. But Rubio bests Cruz by one percentage point in a new national survey from Quinnipiac.
