Ted Cruz’s secret: Mastering social media

Ted Cruz announced his Senate run 18 months ago in an unconventional way emblematic of the campaign to come: on a conference call with Texas’s conservative bloggers. Then he tweeted it. Since then, Cruz climbed from obscurity to the brink of the year’s biggest upset and, in the process, became Exhibit A of how to effectively use social media to grow a movement.

He currently holds a big polling lead over Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst in Tuesday's run-off for the GOP nomination. “Ted Cruz is the Barack Obama of 2012,” said Sean Theriault, a University of Texas at Austin political scientist. “It is a great case study of using these tools in politics.” For all the hype surrounding social media in campaigns, Cruz is among the first American examples of a dark horse candidate who rode to victory by tapping into the vast power of Facebook, Twitter, blogs and email. Whether he wins or loses Tuesday, the fact that he emerged as a serious contender — thanks largely to a foundation poured online — has even his opponents in awe.