WASHINGTON -- The four super PACs supporting Texas Sen. Ted Cruz’s bid for the Republican Party presidential nomination raked in $37.8 million in the first half of the year, according to reports filed with the Federal Election Commission.
The haul for the Keep the Promise groups came from a small number of donors, as each group was designed to be controlled by individual donors.
Keep the Promise I raised $11 million from New York hedge fund investor Robert Mercer. Keep the Promise II received $10 million from Texas private equity investor Toby Neugebauer. Keep the Promise III received $15 million from the billionaire Texas fracking family of Farris, Jo Ann, Daniel and Staci Wilks. Finally, Keep the Promise PAC received funds from a more diverse audience, including $500,000 from Houston Texans owner Robert McNair and $250,000 from investor John W. Childs, but only raised $1.8 million total.
The complicated, donor-driven nature of the Cruz super PACs, however, did reveal itself in the spending of the Mercer-funded Keep the Promise I. This super PAC, supposedly created to support Cruz, donated $500,000 to a super PAC supporting former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, who is also running for the Republican presidential nomination. Mercer has also donated $2,700 of his funds to Fiorina’s official campaign committee.
CORRECTION: This post originally flipped the donors and amounts given to Keep the Promise II and Keep the Promise III. Keep the Promise II received $10 million from Neugebauer, and Keep the Promise III received $15 million from the Wilks family.
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