October 9, 2018

This Anti-Ted Cruz Ad Probably Won’t Flip Many Votes, But It’s Pretty Funny

“Come on, Ted.”

FTC PAC/YouTube

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Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, running for reelection after a bruising 2016 presidential bid, has embraced a campaign slogan that could also be used to sell trucks or, I don’t know, asphalt—he’s “Tough as Texas.”

This was a decent, if characteristically overwrought, persona for Cruz to embrace prior to 2016, when he’d gained a reputation as a Senate rebel who spearheaded a shutdown of the federal government. But if there’s a fulcrum on which his career has seesawed, it was two incidents in the spring of 2016, as the senator tried to catch up to Donald Trump in the GOP delegate count. First, Trump promised to “spill the beans” on Cruz’s wife, Heidi, then retweeted an unflattering photo of her. Then Trump suggested that Cruz’s dad, Rafael, who is Cuban American, was involved in the plot to assassinate President John F. Kennedy. Cruz ultimately responded, as one does, by campaigning for Trump, by bringing his daughters to the White House for a photo op, and finally, by welcoming Trump and the first family to Texas to help him fend off Democratic Rep. Beto O’Rourke in this year’s Senate race.

This is, anyway, the basic idea behind Austin-based director Richard Linklater’s new campaign ad, on behalf of a Democratic super-PAC called Fire Ted Cruz PAC:

The added context, for Linklater diehards, is that the ad features a character from a previous Linklater film, Bernie:

As Linklater characters go, they probably could’ve done worse.

With O’Rourke mounting the first competitive Democratic statewide campaign in Texas in years, it’s been all hands on deck for the state’s liberal celebrities. The congressman did an interview with the actor Ethan Hawke. He rallied in Austin with Willie Nelson. And now we’ve got Linklater. Whither Beyonce?

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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