Pro-Cruz Super PAC Seeks to Capitalize on Polling Gains

A super PAC supporting Ted Cruz is seeking to capitalize on his recent gains in polling with a new online ad and mail pieces introducing the Republican presidential candidate to voters in Iowa as well as South Carolina. 

Keep the Promise I, one of four main super PACs backing the Texas senator, announced Tuesday the groups are spending over $600,000 on the new push, which comes as Cruz looks more and more like a top-tier candidate nationally and in the Hawkeye State. On Monday, Cruz took his first-ever lead in an early voting state poll, beating billionaire Donald Trump 24 percent to 19 percent in a Monmouth University survey of likely caucus-goers in Iowa.

"Voters are coalescing around a consensus candidate, Sen. Ted Cruz," Kellyanne Conway, president of Keep the Promise I, said in a statement. "They are standing shoulder-to-shoulder at rallies, events and often late at night to show support for and to hear from the man who stands passionately for conservative principles — and has acted on them." 

The 60-second ad, titled "We the People," is being "strategically targeted" on social media for at least a week in the first four early voting states, Keep the Promise I said. The spot features Cruz reciting a part of his stump speech in which he brags about his outsider status in the nation's capital. 

"When we launched our campaign, The New York Times promptly opined, 'Cruz cannot win because the Washington elites despise him,'" Cruz says in the ad. "I kind of thought that was the whole point of the campaign!"

"If you think things are going great in Washington, and we need to keep going in the same direction and maybe just fiddle around the edges, then I ain’t your guy," Cruz adds as the spot shows footage of campaign events, including a rally he held earlier this year in Fort Worth. 

The mail pieces, each eight pages in a newspaper-style format, are going out this week to 130,000 households in Iowa and 320,000 in South Carolina, according to the super PAC. In addition to spelling out Cruz's biography, the flyers tout high-profile endorsements in each state, such as U.S. Rep. Steve King in Iowa; rattle off statistics about the campaign's organization across the country; and nod to the state of the race with less than two months until the first nominating contest.

"While it has been a rambunctious, unpredictable race with fast-rising candidates who seemed more like novelties or celebrities, Iowans now seem to be gravitating towards Senator Cruz as the serious-minded conservative for serious times," reads the mail piece being sent to Iowans. 

The new ad and mail pieces coincide with a $1 million radio campaign by Keep the Promise I that started in September and is set to last through this month. Officials with the cluster of pro-Cruz super PACs have said they are waiting to advertise on television for now, instead putting a focus on building a ground game in the early voting states and beyond.