And he (Ted) had to know where that would go.
You are one hundred percent right. Cruz knew exactly which gutter Roe would drag his campaign into:
‘Cruz was intimately familiar with Roe’s aggressive tactics before he hired him. He’d been on the receiving end in 2012, when Roe was the direct-mail consultant for Cruz’s Senate primary opponent. One Roe-produced mailer so incensed Cruz that he pulled it out as a prop during a debate and denounced his opponent for daring to “impugn my patriotism.”
About two years later, Cruz hired him.’
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/02/ted-cruz-tricks-jeff-roe-219945