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Most people wouldn’t put Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) next to civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks, but the Texas Republican’s attorneys had no problem making the comparison.
Especially if it helps Cruz get back $10,000 from the Federal Election Commission.
Cruz’s lawyers made the bizarre analogy in a court document filed Monday that centers around a $260,000 loan the senator made to his 2018 campaign right before the November election, according to Newsweek.
Current rules put a $250,000 limit on the amount a candidate can fundraise to repay a personal loan to their campaign, the Center for Responsive Politics notes. However, in a lawsuit filed in April, Cruz’s lawyers argued that these FEC rules restrict candidates’ abilities to “exercise their constitutional right to express their political views.”
The FEC has filed to dismiss the suit, saying that Cruz’s campaign could’ve easily paid back the senator with part of the $2.2 million dollars it raised before the election, or by loaning the campaign no more than $250,000, as allowed by law.
Yet Monday’s court document shows that Cruz’s lawyers see little difference between a wealthy senator who is miffed he has to follow existing fundraising rules and a black civil rights icon who was arrested when she defied segregation in Alabama.
Here’s the argument from Cruz’s lawyers in all its shamelessness:
“The FEC also asserts that Senator Cruz and the Cruz Committee inflicted their injuries on themselves because they could have arranged to repay the Senator’s loans using pre-election funds. Yes, and Rosa Parks could have sat in the back of the bus.”
The Loan Repayment Limit that is apparently killing Cruz’s fundraising buzz is supposed to stop corruption — by preventing newly elected (or re-elected) officials from giving post-election donors the impression that since they’re now safely in office, they’ll vote according to the donors’ wishes, according to Talking Points Memo.
Removing the limit could give lobbyists even more influence over how politicians vote, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
The FEC alleges that Cruz only loaned $260,000 to his campaign for the purpose of challenging the limit.
Twitter users, meanwhile, were appalled by Cruz’s lawyers’ analogy.
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