GOP presidential candidate Ted Cruz's campaign Tuesday strongly denied accusations by rival candidate Ben Carson that the Texas Republican's supporters had used "dirty tricks" to steal votes from the retired neurosurgeon's supporters by telling them he'd suspended his campaign.
"That is just false," Rick Tyler, Cruz's communications director, told MSNBC's
"Morning Joe" program.
"We repeated what Ben Carson said in his own words. He said after Iowa he was going back to Florida for a couple of days and then he said he was going to [Washington] D.C. for the [National] Prayer Breakfast."
That statement, Tyler said, "told us he was not going to New Hampshire. That was not a dirty trick. It was surprising by a campaign that was once leading in Iowa saying he's not going to come to New Hampshire. That's a news item."
Cruz's campaign also came under fire last week after sending out a
campaign mailer that Iowa's secretary of state said misrepresented election law, and Tyler on Tuesday also defended the item.
The mailer billed itself as a "voting violation" notice and tells the recipient it's been sent due to "low expected voter turnout in your area." It then grades the recipient's voting history and that of several neighbors, citing public records.
"I could show you lots of mailers that people — that I would consider deceptive," Tyler told the show, but the Cruz mailer "was reminding people it was their obligation and duty to vote. People who normally don't vote and that we believed would vote for Ted Cruz."
Meanwhile, Carson, who came in at fourth place in Iowa's GOP caucuses behind Cruz, Donald Trump, and Marco Rubio, on Tuesday accused supporters for Cruz, including Sen. Steve King, of engaging in "dirty tricks" to take votes away from him, and insisted he is not leaving the campaign.
"At many of the precincts, information was disseminated that I was suspending my campaign, that I had dropped out," the retired neurosurgeon told Fox News'
"Fox & Friends" program.
Further, he accused Cruz surrogates of telling voters that "anybody who was planning to vote for me was wasting their vote and therefore they should reconsider."
In addition, he complained that King sent a damaging tweet, urging voters to switch sides:
"That's one of the tweets," said Carson. "Here's the thing, if Ted Cruz doesn't know about this then he clearly needs to very quickly get rid of some people in his organization. And if he does know about it, isn't this the exact kind of thing that the American people are tired of? Why would we want to continue with that kind of shenanigans?"
And if Cruz does not know what was happening, "he needs to get rid of the people who who were responsible for that. I mean, that would be a high priority for me. And if he did know about it, then he needs to come out and admit what he did and try to offer a solution."
Carson said his wife also ran into the same issue on Monday night.
"She spoke at one of the caucus sites and before she got there one of the Cruz people had again disseminated that information to the crowd. And the organizers, they said, 'I'm so glad you here so you can set the record straight' and she did. We actually won in that precinct."
Carson said he thinks his numbers would have been much higher if Cruz' supporters hadn't been spreading rumors about his campaign.
"I got calls from several people who told me their internal intelligence said that I was going to do extraordinarily well," said Carson.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
© 2026 Newsmax. All rights reserved.