LAS VEGAS, Nevada — Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio’s campaign sent out an announcement calling Nevadans to email “Our Nevada Truth Squad” under the banner of pushing back on dirty campaign tricks from rival campaigns.
The email starts by pushing a message of Marco-mentum from last Saturday’s South Carolina primary election. Rubio and candidate Ted Cruz came in at a virtual dead heat, a considerable margin behind GOP frontrunner Donald Trump.
Rubio held a campaign rally Tuesday morning as Nevada caucus goers were just hours from heading to voting locations, but by paragraph two the email moves to talk about “dirty tricks” — which was also the subject line of the email — by other campaigns. Specifically the email calls out Rubio’s close competitor Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and what Rubio’s campaign calls “nasty and negative tactics.”
The email goes on to say:
However, in South Carolina, we saw a disturbing pattern of dirty tricks attacking Marco and trying to deceive voters. Many of these underhanded tactics came from the campaign of Senator Ted Cruz. This first began in Iowa with false rumors about Ben Carson. Then in the week before South Carolinians voted, we saw the Cruz campaign and their allies unleash a wave of lies about Marco’s record, anonymous push polls, outrageous robocalls, fake Facebook posts, personal insults directed at popular South Carolina leaders, and ads that had to actually be taken down.
Today, Nevadans will hold their own caucuses. We are concerned that the Cruz campaign will try to do to Marco or other candidates what they did to Ben Carson and systematically distribute false and malicious rumors.
No matter what Cruz campaign representatives may say at the caucuses today, Marco is the only conservative who can unite this party, has built a campaign in all 50 states, and is the only candidate who can beat the Democrats in 2016.
These nasty and negative tactics cannot stand.
Marco is running on his message, not tearing others down with the underhanded tactics we’ve seen employed by others.
Then comes the big announcement of Rubio’s “Truth Squad:”
Please help us push back: Our Nevada Truth Squad is up and running. Shoot an email to truthsquad@marcorubio.com to help us get the message out and push back on the relentlessly negative tactics of our opponents.
The email is signed: Team Marco NV.
Rubio will skip his own Nevada caucus night event as voting results come in. Instead he is heading out to hold campaign events in Minneapolis and Grand Rapids, Michigan in the latter portion of Nevada caucus day.
News also broke exclusively on Breitbart News Tuesday that Rubio would skip the prominent Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) a gathering of thousands of conservative activists in Washington, D.C.
Follow Michelle Moons on Twitter @MichelleDiana