There is more than a year to go before election day, and Texas Sen. John Cornyn still has no viable primary challenger. But on Monday, his reelection campaign went up on television with a big ad buy, its first of the campaign season.
It is Cornyn’s first television ad, and according to a campaign aide, it was a “several hundred thousand” dollar buy, and the ad will run statewide.
The ad touts Cornyn as “conservative, like you, like Texas,” and it begins with a topic that the junior Senator from Texas, Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, has been hitting hard in the past several weeks.
“Senator John Cornyn has voted time and time again against Obamacare,” says a narrator, who goes on to tout Cornyn’s support for a balanced budget amendment, repealing the death tax, and shrinking the size of government.
Cruz, two weeks ago, spoke on the floor for over 21 hours in an attempt to convince Senate Republicans to vote against a procedural bill, a move he contended would facilitate defunding the healthcare law as part of the government funding bill. Cruz was unsuccessful, and Cornyn was one of the many Republican Senators who went against his junior colleague’s wishes.
For that, Cornyn was lambasted by Senate Conservatives Fund, an outside group supporting Cruz’s efforts, as a “turncoat” guilty of the “ultimate betrayal.”