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12  FEDERAL ELECTION COMM’N v. TED CRUZ FOR SENATE 

Opinion of the Court 

candidate will not be repaid if he chooses to loan his cam-
paign more than $250,000.  And that risk in turn may deter
some  candidates  from  loaning  money  to  their  campaigns 
when they otherwise would, reducing the amount of politi-
cal speech.  This “drag” on a candidate’s First Amendment
right to use his own money to facilitate political speech is 
no less burdensome “simply because it attaches as a conse-
quence of a statutorily imposed choice.”  Id., at 739. 

The “drag,” moreover, is no small matter.  Debt is a ubiq-
uitous tool for financing electoral campaigns.  The raw dol-
lar amount of loans made to campaigns in any one election
cycle  is  in  the  nine  figures,  “significantly  exceeding”  the
amount of independent expenditures.  Ovtchinnikov, Debt 
11.  And personal loans from candidates themselves consti-
tute the bulk of this financing.  See Brief for Appellant 35
(“more  than  90%  of  campaign  debt  consists  of  candidate 
loans”).  In fact, candidates who self-fund usually do so us-
ing personal loans.  See J. Steen, Self-Financed Candidates 
in Congressional Elections 21 (2006). 

The ability to lend money to a campaign is especially im-
portant for new candidates and challengers.  As a practical
matter, personal loans will sometimes be the only way for 
an unknown challenger with limited connections to front-
load campaign spending.  See G. Jacobson, Money in Con-
gressional Elections 97–101 (1980).  And early spending— 
and  thus  early  expression—is  critical  to  a  newcomer’s 
success.  See Steen, Self-Financed Candidates in Congres-
sional Elections, at 35, 171.  A large personal loan also may 
be a useful tool to signal that the political outsider is confi-
dent enough in his campaign to have skin in the game, at-
tracting  the  attention  of  donors  and  voters  alike.    See  R. 
Biersack, P. Herrnson, C. Wilcox, Seeds for Success: Early
Money in Congressional Elections, 18 Leg. Studies Q. 535, 
537  (1993);  see  also  Brief  for  United  States  Senator  Roy 
Blunt et al. as Amici Curiae 13.  By inhibiting a candidate