Cruz Is Making A Buck Off Trump By Renting Out His Donor Email List

Republican presidential candidate, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas speak during a campaign stop at The Indiana War Memorial Friday, April 29, 2016, in Indianapolis. (AP Photo/Darron Cummings)
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While Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) may have been “agonizing” over his decision to endorse Donald Trump, he’s been quietly allowing Trump’s message to reach his supporters for months.

Cruz rented his huge donor email file to Trump about six weeks after dropping out of the Republican primary race, Politico reported late Sunday, giving him a source of campaign cash for yet another potential run for office.

Emails began circulating from the Trump campaign to Cruz’s online donors on June 17, and in the last three months the Trump campaign has emailed Cruz’s donor list more than 30 times, according to the report.

Although it’s unclear exactly how much Cruz stands to make off the deal, he asks campaigns to pay more than $22,000 to send just one email to his list of 280,000 online donors, according to a rate sheet obtained by Politico. The Cruz campaign also charges more than $51,000 to send a message to his full list of 1.28 million supporters.

Email list renting is not an uncommon practice in campaigning. But Trump has not asked his former rivals, Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R) or former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R), for access to their lists, anonymous advisors to each campaign told Politico. Bush’s advisor would not speculate if Bush would have said yes, and Kasich’s advisor said he would have rejected the idea.

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