Stockman’s challenge has caught the state’s political class off guard. | AP Photo Anti-Stockman ad going on the air

A super PAC that supports GOP Texas Sen. John Cornyn is launching a major television buy Wednesday against Rep. Steve Stockman, his primary challenger.

The 30-second spot from Texans for a Conservative Majority, shared first with POLITICO, focuses on Stockman’s business record and alleged ethical problems.


The group is not publicly disclosing the size of the buy, but representatives said it will begin airing in southeast Texas and Houston, the area Stockman represents in the House, before expanding to other markets.

“Lies, shady deals, ethical failings: It’s everything that’s wrong with Washington, and its Congressman Steve Stockman’s troubling record,” a narrator says. “ The Houston Chronicle reports Congressman Stockman failed to disclose business deals in places like the Virgin Islands, was fined 40 grand for violating federal law and is now trying to hide the facts amid calls for an ethics investigation.”

Stockman spokesman Donny Ferguson disputed the allegations.

“The reason those businesses weren’t disclosed is because they ceased to exist years, sometimes a full decade, before Stockman ever entered Congress,” he wrote in an email. “The Chronicle intentionally did not report that fact.”

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Stockman’s challenge — he filed just minutes before the deadline — caught the state’s political class off guard. The congressman has kept a low profile since then, and Cornyn is considered a very strong favorite in Texas’s March primary.

The president of Texans for a Conservative Majority, Randy Cubriel, is an Austin-based attorney who long worked for Cornyn, going back to the senator’s time as Texas attorney general and his 2002 election to the Senate. The group received a $2 million contribution last year from the late Houston homebuilder Bob Perry, a major GOP donor.

Stockman’s camp attacked both Perry and Cornyn for supporting immigration reform, which they allege is tantamount to “amnesty.”

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“John Cornyn is using a shell group to spend amnesty cash to demonstrably lie about Steve Stockman,” said Ferguson. “It’s exactly the same thing they did to Ted Cruz.”

Cornyn himself had $7 million available in his campaign account at the end of the third quarter, compared to only $32,000 for Stockman. He will face only nominal Democratic opposition in the general election.

The commercial’s tagline is that Stockman is “just another shady Washington politician.”