Lee: Cruz, Scott need more help in reelection bids

Senate Steering Committee Chair Mike Lee (R-Utah) is calling for GOP political funding groups to spend more of their resources into Texas and Florida to help embattled conservative Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Rick Scott (R-Fla.).

Cruz is locked into a margin-of-error race against Rep. Colin Allred (D-Texas), who is raising substantially more money than the GOP incumbent, and Scott faces a competitive race against former Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell (D-Fla.) in a state where an abortion rights measure is on the ballot.

Lee says the National Republican Senatorial Committee and the Senate Leadership Fund, a super PAC aligned with Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), should do more to help Cruz and Scott, the Democrats’ top targets.

“I am worried about it. I think both Ted and Rick are ahead, but it’s closer than it should be,” Lee told Semafor. “It’s also troubling … there’s an inequity there. These guys are Republican colleagues, they’re in very close races in a general election, they could use the help.”

Cruz recently called out McConnell for not doing more to direct money to his race, noting McConnell’s affiliation with SLF, which is run by his former chief of staff, Steven Law.

“Mitch McConnell runs the largest Republican super PAC in the country and has $400 million, but that super PAC is used to reward the Republican senators who obey him and to punish those who dare to stand up him,” Cruz told conservative talk show host Mark Levin during a recent interview.

“I’m being massively outspent again. [Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.)] is spending millions. And yet he spent zero,” he added, referring to McConnell.

McConnell is barred by campaign finance law from directing the super PAC’s funding decisions, but he has raised more than $1 billion for the group since it launched.

The Senate Republican campaign arm had spent $3 million in coordinated expenditures with the Cruz campaign on television advertising and had transferred $2.5 million to the Texas Republican Party as of the end of September.