On Monday, an email to voters from Cruz’s Hawaii field office strongly suggested that Marco Rubio would be dropping out of the race before next week’s Florida primary and that a vote for Rubio would be “wasted.” The press release cited a CNN report that was thoroughly debunked earlier in the day.
This is not the first time Cruz has dabbled in shady dealings. It began in Iowa when Cruz’s camp sent phony mailers disguised as official government documents to voters warning them of “voting violations.” Then came false reports that Ben Carson was dropping out of the race. In state after state, Cruz’s Republican opponents leveled fresh allegations of false or misleading statements made by the Texan’s campaign.
By February, his campaign was so inundated with charges of impropriety that Cruz fired his communications director after he pushed yet another false story to voters, this time involving Marco Rubio. The move was construed as a tacit admission of guilt and a signal that the campaign would be more careful about the messages it sends. But Rick Tyler’s departure doesn’t seem to have put an end to the Cruz campaign’s shadiness.