Ted Cruz’s Senate Campaign Has Spent Thousands At Beauty Spas

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) has spent thousands of dollars from his campaign account at beauty spas over the years, potentially breaking rules against personal use of campaign funds.

Paperwork filed with the Federal Election Commission from 2016 through October, reviewed by HuffPost, shows the Ted Cruz for Senate campaign committee has spent more than $9,000 at salons.

It’s not clear if the expenses were for the candidate, who doesn’t appear to wear makeup or maintain an expensive haircut, or for someone else. Cruz’s wife, Heidi Cruz, has acted as a campaign surrogate in the past.

The most recent expenditure was $282 at Allure Day Spa in New York City on Oct. 11, between the first and second weeks of Cruz’s bus tour across Texas. It’s not clear what the money was spent on, though the most expensive package the spa advertises on its website costs $250 and provides “HydraFacial skin-renewing treatments” to “help you achieve a youthful, confident look.”

Earlier this year, the Cruz campaign spent $310 in June and $876 in February on a makeup artist in Houston. The campaign has listed the same vendor more than a dozen times in FEC reports going back to 2018.

The Cruz campaign declined to comment for this story.

Candidates for federal office aren’t allowed to spend campaign funds on themselves, though there can be gray areas, including for things like meals and travel costs. The FEC says candidates should use what’s known as an “irrespective test” to determine whether the spending should count as personal or official, stating on its website that “if the expense would exist even in the absence of the candidacy or even if the officeholder were not in office, then the personal use ban applies.”

Richard Briffault, an expert on campaign finance at Columbia Law School, said the question of whether the beauty spa expenditures were acceptable could depend on whether the Cruz campaign’s spending was for something more elaborate than what the recipient of these services does as part of their normal routine.

“It is personal use,” Briffault said. “And the question is, is it the kind of personal use that [they] would be doing irrespective of whether or not he was running for office?”

Cruz is in a close reelection contest with Democratic challenger Rep. Colin Allred (Texas), who has frequently brought up the Cruz family’s 2021 trip to Cancun in the middle of a winter storm that killed more than 200 Texans.

Campaign spending on personal luxuries has caused controversy in the past. In 2009, the group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington filed a complaint against the Republican National Committee for having spent six figures on fancy clothes for Sarah Palin when she was John McCain’s running mate. The FEC dismissed the complaint, saying the personal use ban applied to individual campaign committees, not party committees.

In 2007, Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards used campaign funds for insanely expensive haircuts, including one that cost $1,250 because he flew his stylist out to do the trim on the campaign trail. The story was an embarrassment for Edwards, whose campaign focused on the scourge of poverty — but it did not result in a sanction by the FEC. Edwards was later indicted for campaign finance violations related to his coverup of an extramarital affair.

During a podcast episode in June focused on Donald Trump’s conviction for falsifying business records related to hush money payments that the government said amounted to campaign expenditures, Cruz talked about the irrespective test specifically in reference to personal haircuts.

“We don’t want candidates using campaign funds to pay personal expenses, whether new clothes, a weight loss program, or a gym membership purchased to help the candidate look better,” Cruz said, quoting a former FEC commissioner, and prompting an interruption from his co-host, Ben Ferguson.

“So when you’re running for office – just to be very clear on his point – you can’t say I’m going to take a $50,000 wardrobe for all these campaign events because it’s still technically clothes for you personally,” Ferguson said. “Can’t say, ‘I need a haircut and I’m gonna get one every day.’”

“Cannot do. And they’ll go after you for it,” Cruz said. “If you do it, they will go after you for personal use.”