Crockett, who on Tuesday nearly won without a runoff, blasts rival’s campaign tactics. Hamilton fires back.
Down to two candidates, the race to replace longtime Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson hit another gear this week as Jasmine Crockett and Jane Hamilton exchanged heated accusations in what could be a bitter runoff campaign for Congressional District 30.
Crockett, a state representative from Dallas, came within a few hundred votes Tuesday of winning the Democratic primary without a runoff. Capturing 48% of the vote in a nine-person contest, Crockett finished far ahead of Hamilton, who managed about 17%, but good enough to make the next round.
In an interview with The Dallas Morning News, Crockett said she was confident that she would prevail in the May 24 runoff, but lashed out at Hamilton for what she described as “low” and “desperate” campaign tactics.
Specifically, Crockett says Hamilton’s campaign operatives had mischaracterized the support she received from two PACs controlled by crypto currency financiers.
“I’m concerned about the lack of integrity that I fully anticipate will come from the other side, because I’ve seen it thus far in this race and I know with these types of numbers against them, their desperation will only sink to new lows,” Crockett told The News.
The Web 3 Forward PAC and another group called Protect Our Future pledged to spend $1 million each to get Crockett elected, and their television and digital ads were ubiquitous during the final stages of the March 1 campaign.
At the time, Crockett told The News that she backs the goals of Protect Our Future, which seeks to help America protect itself against another pandemic.
“We talked a lot about the fact that our vulnerabilities have been exposed with this current pandemic, and if anybody thinks this is the last one, they’re wrong,” Crockett said.
When asked to respond to Crockett’s concerns and about her path forward in the runoff, Hamilton, a former chief of staff for U.S. Rep. Marc Veasey, emailed The News prepared statements in answer to questions.
“Crockett is on record having met with cryptocurrency billionaires and then welcoming spending $2 million on her behalf to buy this election,” Hamilton’s statement read. “If Crockett now wants to deny welcoming the $2 million, then she should simply answer the question of who paid for the barrage of TV ads, radio ads and mailers in the final weeks of the election.”
But Crockett stressed that she did not personally receive $2 million from the PACs, nor did her campaign. By law, PACs cannot coordinate campaign efforts with candidates or their campaigns. Their spending is independent, though voters often can’t tell the difference between a PAC ad or one produced by a candidate’s campaign. Crockett said the groups were attracted to her because she’s going to win the District 30 race and she has not rejected the support.
Crockett said she doesn’t have a position on whether regulation is needed for the cryptocurrency space. President Joe Biden is expected to push to regulate the industry.
She said she didn’t know that Protect Our Future was controlled by crypto currency financiers until she read it in The News.
As the super PAC money rolled in on behalf of Crockett, supporters of Hamilton moved to cast the support as unseemly.
A group called The Justice Fund, a nonprofit arm of the Lone Star Project, the research group where Hamilton used to work, spent about $27,000 on a radio ad blasting Crockett over the support her candidacy was getting from the PACs.
“This mischaracterization that I accepted a dime of money from a super PAC, that’s what they were out at the polls saying. Oh, ‘she took $2 million,’ knowing that that is illegal,” Crockett said of Hamilton’s campaign. “Just focus on you and what you have to offer. Lying to constituents in order to try to confuse them, those are Republican tactics.”
Crockett and Hamilton also sparred over the issue of mail-in voting. The frontrunner suggested that Hamilton’s campaign was running a shady mail-in ballot campaign.
“They ran ballots on me,” Crockett said.
She pointed to election results in Tarrant County, where Hamilton had slightly more mail-in votes than Crockett, but finished third in that county when the in-person early and election day votes were counted. Crockett got nearly 58% of the overall vote in Tarrant County.
“In Tarrant County, their campaign got more vote-by-mail ballots than I did, yet I took Tarrant County by almost 60%,” Crockett said. “The other team, I don’t think they were even second in Tarrant County, but somehow you got more votes by mail ballots. I’m not stupid, and I know who does what.”
Hamilton shot back that she was surprised by Crockett’s “defensiveness and insecurity.”
“Right now, we have seniors who are struggling to vote and having mail-in ballots rejected at historical percentages because Crockett, Trump and Abbott continue to make baseless accusations of voter fraud,” Hamilton said in a statement. “This is not the first time Crockett has attacked the voters with these same baseless allegations and I doubt it will be the last.”
Crockett was unmoved, saying that there’s no evidence of widespread voter fraud as described by Republicans, but pointed to investigations in previous election cycles by the Dallas County District Attorney’s office as evidence that there are a few instances of the elderly being taken advantage of by mail-in ballot operatives.
“They will do whatever it takes, and that’s just not what we should even consider accepting in our politics,” Crockett said. “I’ve got three months. We’ve got a few phone calls that we can make. We can figure out what was what and see if everything was above board, but that’s not the normal trend.”
In her interview with The News, Crockett was pleased with her campaign performance, given that she was the last major candidate in the contest. But she wanted to avoid the runoff in order to transition to Congress. There is a runoff in the GOP primary between James “J. Frank” Harris and James Rodgers, but the district is overwhelmingly Democratic.
“I love to be with the people,” Crockett said. “I will take this time to continue to meet more and more constituents and truly get prepared for the next leg, which is getting transitioned into D.C.”
Crockett said “Jasmine voters are more enthusiastic” and would return to the polls. She added that supporters of Johnson were also excited about the changing of the guard. Johnson is retiring after nearly 30 years representing District 30 and she has endorsed Crockett for the seat.
“We have all of the tools to get it done, so I absolutely believe that we will,” Crockett said.
Hamilton also expressed confidence.
“I look forward to this head-to-head runoff where voters will get to decide,” she said in a written answer. “When you compare my professional experience to her newcomer status and my record to her rhetoric, I am confident my vision for strong jobs and protecting voting rights will resonate with voters.”
One of Hamilton’s biggest challenges is developing the resources to match the television and digital operations of Crockett and her boosters.
“I’m confident we will have the resources needed to get our message to the voters,” she said. “This race will not be decided by money, it will be decided by the voters. If $2 million from crypto billionaires and the endorsement of the 30-year incumbent can’t get you above 50% of the vote, then the problem is you.”
