It took Ted Cruz four months and three weeks of “careful consideration, of prayer and searching my own conscience” to declare publicly that he would vote for Donald Trump.

He made the decision to profit by selling his supporter list to Trump far faster than that.


Just six weeks after he dropped out – and more than a month before Cruz would dramatically snub the nominee at the Republican National Convention – the senator quietly began renting his vast donor email file to his former rival, pocketing at least tens of thousands of dollars, and more likely hundreds of thousands, that can be used to bankroll the Texan’s own political future.

Trump began paying to solicit some of Cruz’s supporters for campaign cash as early as June 17. “We need you to stand with Mr. Trump before it is too late,” read the initial Trump campaign missive. A second solicitation came the next day. Another came the day after that. All told, in the last three months Trump has emailed at least some segments of Cruz’s donor list more than 30 times.

Indeed, only hours before Cruz pointedly and publicly refused to endorse – “Vote your conscience,” he said in July, as he was booed off the RNC stage and his wife whisked from the crowd for her own safety – the senator had rented his email list to Trump. “We must seize this moment to build on our momentum and Make America First Again,” Eric Trump wrote in an email to Cruz’s list earlier that day.

The exact details of Trump’s financial arrangement with Cruz are unclear, and loose federal record-keeping makes it impossible to verify. But an email rate sheet obtained by POLITICO shows that Cruz asks campaigns to pay more than $22,000 for the right to send a single email his list of 280,000 digital donors. He charges more than $51,000 to ping his full email file of 1.28 million supporters. Because Trump has rented Cruz’s list so often, he is almost surely receiving a negotiated discount from the list price, industry veterans say.

“You are just a send away from reaching the most engaged and generous supporters in Republican presidential primary history,” the Cruz rate sheet says. More than $20 million was raised from Cruz’s email list, it says.

Since he exited the presidential race in May, Cruz’s campaign committee has reported a total of roughly $290,000 in list rental income, Federal Election Commission records show. Trump’s campaign directly rented Cruz’s list five times in June and since early July his joint fundraising committee with the Republican National Committee — which gives 80 percent of its proceeds to Trump — has rented the Cruz’s list more than 25 times.

The buying and selling of email addresses is standard fare in modern politics — but less typical among bitter rivals. After Cruz failed to back Trump at the convention, he told the Texas delegation he would not “go like a servile puppy dog” and simply endorse after Trump had “slandered” his family.

“I am not in the habit of supporting people who attack my wife and attack my father,” Cruz said then. He had been by renting Trump his email list for more than a month.

Cruz spokeswoman Catherine Frazier defended Cruz’s email rentals. “Renting out email lists is a very common practice among all campaigns and that is something, even before his decision to endorse, was an action he was willing to take to help the Republican Party at large,” she said.

Only two former Trump primary rivals, Jeb Bush and John Kasich, still have not endorsed Trump. Neither have sold their emails lists to him, nor has Trump asked, according to advisers to both men. A Bush adviser declined to speculate on the “hypothetical” of whether Bush would rent Trump his list; a Kasich adviser said the Ohio governor would not.

In addition to paying to rent Cruz’s list, his campaign has offered some candidates the ability to strike so-called “revenue-sharing” agreements where, unbeknownst to the donor, Cruz and the renter split the donation. The rate sheet suggests Cruz would receive 60 percent of those funds, while the renter would receive 40 percent.

Some of the clearest records of Trump’s use of Cruz’s list are maintained by Robert Graham, a cyber security expert who donated $10 to most of the presidential candidates early in the 2016 cycle and created separate email accounts for each donation to track how the campaigns shared his email address. Graham provided POLITICO access to his Cruz-list email records, which is the source of Trump-rented emails cited above.

Graham’s records show that Trump and his joint fundraising committee has solicited the Cruz list more than any other candidate or committee — a total of 31 times, most recently on Friday, only hours before Cruz revealed on Facebook that he was voting for Trump.

Nowhere in the fine print of the Trump emails does it disclose to recipients that they ended up on the GOP nominee’s email list by previously signing up for Cruz’s list.

After campaigns end, many candidates hire third-party vendors to manage their valuable email lists, paying them a portion of the profits for their services. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who ended his brief presidential campaign deep in debt, has made back $441,000 in list rentals in the last year, FEC records show.

Cruz’s team decided to keep at least some of their list-rental efforts in house.

On June 24, according to Texas public records, a new firm called Reignite Digital LLC was registered at the address of the Austin offices of Axiom Strategies, the firm of Cruz campaign manager Jeff Roe. John Thompson, who served as Cruz’s digital director, is the president of Reignite LLC, according to his LinkedIn page, and is listed as the point of contact on the rate sheet. The firm’s name appears to be a play off the subtitle of Cruz's most recent book "Reigniting the Promise of America" and its website, which teases it is “coming soon,” features a liberty flame similar to the one in Cruz’s logo.

According to two people familiar with the Cruz operation, Roe, notorious for his attention to detail and interest in cost-cutting, wanted Cruz to operate his own rental business rather than pay a cut to an outside vendor.

“The list should be maintained by someone who cares about the candidate and cares about the opportunity to keep in touch with donors in a way that’s respectful,” a senior Cruz adviser said.

It also means that Cruz’s high command can maintain tighter control. The rate sheet circulated by Reignite says that “’Cruz for President’ or its designated representative from Reignite must approve each sending organization,” as well as “all content prior to sending.”

Since the primary, the Great America PAC, a pro-Trump super PAC, has sent two emails to Cruz’s list, one in July signed by strategist Ed Rollins and one in August, signed by Rudy Giuliani. Beyond Trump, the most common senders to Cruz’s list since he dropped out, according to Graham’s account, are the National Republican Senatorial Committee, Marco Rubio, and the National Republican Congressional Committee.

All told, Reignite has reported sending nearly $200,000 in “list rental income” to Cruz’s campaign committee in July and August. Targeted Victory, a Republican digital firm that worked with Cruz during the primaries, also reported sending Cruz another $88,000 or so in list income.