Supreme Court to hear Senator Cruz's objection to campaign loan rules
Senator Ted Cruz wants the nation’s high court to find that limiting how much a personal loan to his own campaign may be repaid from money raised after an election would violate the First Amendment.
The Supreme Court on Thursday agreed to hear the Federal Election Commission’s appeal of a court order that found unconstitutional a rule that caps at $250,000 the amount of post-election donations a campaign can use to repay the candidate’s personal loan. Cruz claims the rule prevented him from repaying $10,000 of the $260,000 he loaned his 2018 reelection campaign.
Cruz, a Texas Republican, barely held onto his Senate seat in the 2018 election, defeating Democrat Beto O’Rourke by less than 300,000 votes in a campaign in which the candidates raised a combined $114.8 million. That amount shattered the previous record for a U.S. Senate race, which was set in 2012 by Elizabeth Warren and Scott Brown’s $77 million race for a Massachusetts seat.
Immediately after the 2018 election, Cruz’s campaign had $2.38 million in its coffers but owed its creditors $2.7 million, including the $260,000 owed to Cruz for his personal loan, according to court filings.
https://www.courthousenews.com/supreme-court-to-hear-campaign-finance-case/