The Ted Cruz buzz machine

Houston Chronicle:

On a geopolitical level, Ted Cruz's victory in the Texas Senate runoff Tuesday reflected the power of anti-government populism among hard-core Republicans. But the most important lesson of Cruz's landslide win over former front-runner David Dewhurst has less to do with that political message than the rapidly evolving ways in which candidates communicate their message to voters.

The July 31 Republican runoff reflected a massive generation gap in the two candidates' understanding of - and mastery of - social media and online networking.

The 41-year-old Cruz harnessed the power of social media and the Internet to organize his campaign, communicate with supporters and get them to the polls, much like Barack Obamadid in 2008. But Cruz pushed the boundaries of the 21st century communications phenomenon by reaching out to anti-establishment conservatives who then used their own networks to push his candidacy.

Experts say Cruz's communications savvy played a major part in his emergence from obscurity and his ultimate triumph over the 66-year-old Dewhurst.

"The new reality in American politics is the social media and Internet connections," saidClemson University political scientist David Woodard. "They found Ted Cruz as their darling and pushed him hard."

The proof is in the numbers. Cruz had twice as many Facebook fans as Dewhurst, 86,507 to 43,355. And he tweeted to his Twitter followers 5,117 times through runoff day, versus 597 for Dewhurst.

Dewhurst, the state's lieutenant governor for a decade, relied far more on traditional campaign strategies such as extensive television advertising and endorsements by dozens of state legislators and Gov. Rick Perry.

"Cruz ran very much a modern campaign," said University of Texas political scientist Sean Theriault. "Dewhurst's campaign was one that could have worked six years ago, but the Obama team showed how important social media could be to a campaign."

Cruz was conscious of the rapidly evolving social media model from the beginning. He announced his candidacy during a call with conservative bloggers in January 2011, then tweeted the news before holding a news conference. Cruz hired a 24-year-old social media trailblazer, GOP consultant Vincent Harris of Austin, who had helped mobilize conservative bloggers for 2008 presidential candidate Mike Huckabee. Harris created a "blogger action center" to work with conservative opinion leaders such as David Jennings of Big Jolly Politics in Houston, and encouraged like-minded bloggers to post for Cruz on their websites.

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I was certainly on the receiving end of much of Ted Cruz's social media campaign.  It did help him create a buss which made his candidacy look viable when he was down in the polls.  But I think where he really won the race was in attending every Tea Party event on the calendar that it was possible for him to make.  At these events he kept challenging Dewhurst to show up and debate.  It was Dewhurst's failure to engage at these events that probably helped Ted build support among the group and in the process build his social network.  The synergy of the effort showed a campaign that left little to chance.

It was also his personal interaction with these Tea Party voters that made Dewhurst's negative campaign backfire.  In fact, I suspect the negative campaign backfired by angering many of these voters.  The attacks were seen as so unfair they had no credibility.  Pundits often talk about how negative campaigns work, but this one certainly did not and people may want to study it to see how to effectively deal with a negative campaign that is outspending its target.

As for endorsements, they are overrated when given to known politicians.  They have a much more positive effect when given to a lesser known politician.  The Dewhurst endorsements may have actually hurt him with the Tea Party voters.  The fact that he got the endorsements of all the State senate looked more like a reflection of his ability to make committee assignments.  In fact they seemed to snowball the more it looked like he was going to lose and remain as Lt. Gov.

Cruz did benefit from Sarah Palin's endorsement and those of the Club for Growth, Freedom Works and Jim Demint's organization.  They gave his candidacy credibility.  They helped Cruz fight off the negative ad onslaught. Palin has a lot of clout with the Tea Party voters who think she has been unfairly maligned by many in the media.