The Good That Ted Cruz’s Win Can Do
The Supreme Court’s ruling in his favor exposes how broken our campaign-finance law now is.
To hold his Senate seat against his challenger, Beto O’Rourke, in 2018, Ted Cruz spent nearly $40 million. O’Rourke’s campaign spent double that amount.
The day before the vote in Texas, Cruz lent his campaign $260,000. This was a curious—and seemingly unnecessary—gesture: The campaign’s final report showed it ended with $263,000 cash in hand.
Yet Cruz was not acting irrationally. He was preparing the ground for a challenge of his own, an assault on the tottering remains of the McCain-Feingold campaign-finance law of 2002.
That law, more formally known as the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, or BCRA, limited
