FYI
Regarding Cruz and those mailers that the media has already seized upon...
This is what happens when you challenge the ethanol lobby.
The Cruz camp modeled the mailer in question on the Iowa GOP’s own 2014 mailer. Get-out-the-vote efforts aren’t always easy and sometimes reaching certain people who need to be reached is hard, especially in close races. Iowa’s Secretary of State (and Trump and ethanol mandate-supporter) Paul Pate attacked Cruz over it. Matt Schultz, former Iowa Secretary of State and Cruz’s Iowa State Chairman hit back at Pate, saying that such mailers designed specifically for people who don’t often vote are “routine”. (It’s all based on “The Victory Lab”, a book written in 2013 about the psychology of voting. Sometimes aggressive methods based on publicly available information move people. It doesn’t go out to everyone, it goes out to a certain small, subset of people who do not vote.
It works. Instead of “rock the vote”, it’s “nudge the vote”.)
The Iowa Republican establishment has a problem with Cruz doing it because of....ethanol. Cruz opposes the mandates and he stood on stage this past Thursday, looked the establishment ethanol lobby in square in the eye, and said “no more mandates”. He’s been saying it all primary cycle. They hate him for this. The Governor of Iowa, Terry Branstad condemns Cruz because of it. Branstad’s son is the head of an ethanol lobbyist group that has been stalking Cruz all over Iowa protesting him over it. They even thought about dressing as giant corn cobs and running after him. The reason that this mailer nontroversy wasn’t a story back in 2014 when the Iowa Republican establishment did it is because this time around they’re dealing with a candidate who has consistently said he will end their ethanol subsidies and they’re terrified of him so he must be defeated. They’ll partner with Trump (who supported an increase in the ethanol mandate) to do it, too.
Just like in the “Godfather”, you don’t ever take sides against the ethanol lobby.
PS: Joni Ernst did the same with her GOTV mailers.
FYI:
“Texas Sen. Ted Cruz is defending a campaign mailer that Iowa’s secretary of state says misrepresents election law.
The mailer bills itself as a “voting violation” notice and tells the recipient it’s been sent due to “low expected voter turnout in your area.” It then grades the recipient’s voting history and that of several neighbors, citing public records.
Cruz told reporters in Sioux City, Iowa, on Saturday that the mailing is “routine.”
He says he won’t apologize”
Oops.