DeMint PAC to drop half-million for conservative Senate hopeful in Texas

A PAC controlled by Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) will spend $500,000 to air a television ad in Texas bolstering Ted Cruz, the conservative underdog candidate that DeMint has endorsed.

The 15-second ad will start airing immediately and run through the end of January, DeMint said Wednesday in an email to supporters of his Senate Conservatives Fund.

"Tea Party conservative Ted Cruz fought Obama on health care, oil and states' rights. Ted Cruz: the conservative alternative to Dewhurst," the narrator says in the ad.

Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst (R-Texas) is still leading the pack of GOP candidates vying to replace retiring Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas), but DeMint cited a new poll that shows Dewhurst's earlier lead has eroded at the same time that Cruz has surged. Dewhurst is now 18 points ahead of Cruz in the survey released Tuesday by Democratic firm Public Policy Polling.

What was more revealing was a strategy articulated by DeMint that doesn't involve Cruz coming in first in the primary.

"If Dewhurst fails to get 50 percent of the vote in the April 3rd primary, he will be forced into a run-off with the second place finisher," DeMint wrote to supporters. "And if Cruz makes it into the run-off, we believe he will win the two-man race."

Watch the ad:

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