O’Rourke readies for ‘positive’ TV ad launch
Media market push will be response to Cruz attack series
Democrat Beto O’Rourke said he’s going to respond to attack ads launched in limited markets by U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz with a massive statewide TV ad campaign that will include only positive messaging.
After Cruz launched a series of attacks on O’Rourke in Corpus Christi, Beaumont and Lubbock, O’Rourke supporters responded by sending him nearly $1.3 million in just one weekend. O’Rourke said Monday he’ll use that money in 20 Texas media markets to get his own positive messaging up.
“Texans in all 254 counties of our state are proving that together, we will be the big, bold, confident answer to the small, petty, negative attacks that are coming our way,” O’Rourke said, while not yet providing the actual ads he plans to launch.
In the Cruz attack ads, the Republican senator’s campaign goes after O’Rourke as being too liberal for Texas.
“Beto O’Rourke is more extreme than he wants you to know,” a narrator in the ad says.
It points to O’Rourke’s statements from earlier in the summer when he said he would be willing to consider abolishing the U.S. Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. O’Rourke made those comments after the Trump administration began separating immigrant children from their parents at the U.S. border.
O’Rourke said he does not want to eliminate ICE. He said the point he’s been making on the road is that it doesn’t matter if agencies like ICE and Homeland Security are eliminated if there is no change to the practices of the U.S. government. He said that’s what he and others are seeking to change in light of the family separations on the border.
“I want to make sure we are ending the practices of taking kids from their families,” O’Rourke said. “I want to focus on ending the practices.”
Cruz is about to get help from an outside group on the television airwaves. Texans Are, a political action committee expected to support his campaign, is preparing for a big television ad buy in San Antonio, Bryan and Waco. Texans Are has reserved television time in those markets, according to Federal Communication Commission records. The so-called super PAC has raised just over $2.8 million, and its treasurer is Willie Langston, who served as Cruz’s national finance chairman during his 2016 presidential campaign.
Meanwhile, both O’Rourke and Cruz continue to travel the state campaigning. Cruz, after making stops in Brenham and Cypress over the weekend, had stops planned for Amarillo and Lubbock on Monday before flying back to Washington, D.C., when the Senate goes back in session.
O’Rourke meanwhile headed for Tyler and Dallas after spending a big part of the weekend in Houston campaigning.