TED CRUZ VS. BETO O’ROURKEInside the Record-Shattering Race for the Texas Senate

By Josh WeinerNovember 4th 2018

Political Campaigns & Communications Strategies (CCTP-600)Georgetown University

Word Count: 3,987

ABSTRACT

Texas is a state on the rise. Its population is expected to eclipse 45 million over the next

20-some years and a great influx of immigrants— who now constitute one in six residents there

— will continue to contribute to its diversity. Anyone who wishes to become senator of such a

state must now promise to represent both a greater number of people and a broader range of

perspectives than any political figure in Texas’ history has ever before had to do.

The fall 2018 midterm elections will pit two candidates willing to take on this challenge:

Ted Cruz, a Houston local who has served as junior senator since 2013; and Beto O’Rourke, who

has represented his native Greater El Paso district in the House since 2012. Both men handily

won the primary elections back in March, thereby securing their respective parties’ nominations.

Thus set the stage for a showdown between two candidates who come from opposite ends of

Texas and who stand equally far apart on the political spectrum.

Cruz and O’Rourke can be compared and contrasted in many regards. This essay will

analyze each one’s political strategies in this ongoing race, with the general thesis being that

these candidates have both placed stronger emphasis on social media and retail campaigning than

on data-oriented tactics such as micro-targeting. The conclusion will decide why each approach

is befitting of these two candidates and what the outcome of their attitudes towards campaigning

has been as the 2018 race for the senate in Texas has wound its course.

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BETO O’ROURKE

Beto O’Rourke is a shining star for the Democrats at a moment when the party is very

keen on burning more brightly in his home state. “If Texas went blue, there would be Democratic

lock on the presidency,” Lawrence Wright expresses in his new book, God Save Texas (Rice).

Needless to say, that remains a long way off, given that “it has been nearly a quarter-century

since a Texas Democrat has won any statewide race, the longest such losing streak in the nation”

(Rice). It would therefore be a significant achievement for Beto O’Rourke to become the first

Democratic senator from Texas since Bob Krueger left in 1993.

One of the many critical elements in O’Rourke’s campaign has been his approach

towards an important element of many recent political battles in America: “micro-targeted

election campaigning.” This term, coined by data analyst Alexander Gage in 2002, initially

referred to conservative efforts to “use databases to identify Republican voters on a

neighborhood-by-neighborhood, even home-by-home basis,” thereby unearthing potential Red

voters in Democratic precincts (Koman).

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“The ultimate goal [of micro-targeting] is to determine the most efficient and effective

ways to reach and target different types of voters,” according to the book Conventional Wisdom

and American Elections. “This effort helps campaigns identify which individuals are most likely

to turn out to vote and support the campaign’s candidate.” This process can potentially save time

and money for the candidates by informing campaigns in advance “which voters to target (and,

on the flip side, which voters to ignore) and how best to target them” (Baumgartner & Francia,

pg. 23).

Although micro-targeting is now used prominently by both American political parties,

Beto O’Rourke seems to have very much turned his back on this practice. “O’Rourke has defied

the campaign strategies that his party usually employs, rejecting both Clintonian triangulation

and data-driven micro-targeting of likely Democratic voters” (Rice). “In a state with beleaguered

Democratic Party infrastructure, O’Rourke hasn’t hired a political consultant or pollster on his

campaign” (Golshan).

Why would O’Rourke steer away from a process designed to “reap major savings and

efficiency gains for campaigns in terms of both time and money?” (Baumgartner & Francia, pg.

23). Is the inevitable consequence that “he’s spent a lot of precious time campaigning through

lightly populated areas he has no prayer of winning?” (Rice).

O’Rourke may have realized that micro-targeting has not succeeded in lifting Democrats

to public office in Texas. Wendy Davis’ run for governor in 2014 is probably the best recent

example of this fact. Headlines such as “Wendy Davis campaign taking big step on voter

targeting” surfaced regularly in The Dallas Morning News and other prominent newspapers as

the former congresswoman and Fort Worth council member made her gubernatorial challenge.

Much of that voter targeting was administered through a data-driven organization called

Battleground Texas, which was designed “to increase voter turnout, galvanize Hispanic and

female voters and defeat Republican Greg Abbott” (McSwane).

Some impressive statistics emerged from the efforts: Battleground Texas registered

100,000 voters, recruited 35,000 volunteers, and knocked on 7.5 million doors during the 2014

election cycle (Sweany & Draper). Yet despite these efforts, Wendy Davis’ 2014 campaign for

governor has since been described as “a cautionary tale,” given that she won just 39% of the vote

to Abbott’s 58%, “less than past candidates who hardly even tried” (Rice). Her micro-targeting

strategy was criticized as counterproductive: “the Davis campaign’s relationship with

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Battleground Texas resulted in internal squabbles and a complicated financial arrangement that

hobbled her election effort” (McSwane).

Another female Democratic candidate who failed to capitalize on micro-targeting in

Texas— and, indeed, the nation-at-large— is, of course, Hillary Clinton. While running for

president in 2016, she ran a massively data-driven campaign, “filling her innermost circle with

tech-savvy advisers” (Samuelsohn) and making use of the complex computer algorithm Ada,

which “the campaign was prepared to publicly unveil after the election as its invisible guiding

hand” (Wagner).

The micro-targeting approach fueled by Ada lead her staff to investigate many of the

Democratic-leaning urban enclaves throughout Texas. This state was one of several Republican

strongholds which Clinton’s data analytics team pursued in order to “get a feel for just how much

[they] might try to flex Democratic muscles across the map” (Allen & Parnes 2017). It wasn’t

enough: on November 8th 2016, Clinton won the 10 most populous counties in Texas, 2.7 million

votes to 2.1 million. But Trump blew her out in the rest of the state, 2.6 million votes to 1.1

million. In spite of some talks of Texas going blue that year, it wound up staying solidly red in

the end, casting its 38 votes by a not-very-slim majority in favor of Trump.

Winning Texas was always going to be a challenge for these two candidates, as “there’s

no question that turning Texas blue remains a major uphill battle for Democrats” (Golshan). But

enhanced micro-targeting efforts may just not be the way to win that battle. In fact, these tactics

have been criticized on the grounds that they can render campaigns short-sighted and impersonal.

“We Democrats have allowed micro-targeting to become micro-thinking,” Politico

declared in an article entitled “Data-Driven Campaigns are Killing the Democratic Party.”

Author Dave Gold opined, “Each cycle, we speak to fewer and fewer people and have less and

less to say. We all know the results: the loss of 63 seats and control of the House, the loss of 11

seats and control of the Senate, the loss of 13 governorships, the loss of over 900 state legislative

seats and control of 27 state legislative chambers. Yet despite losses on top of losses, we have

continued to double down on data-driven campaigns at the expense of narrative framing and

emotional storytelling.”

Some years after the unsuccessful efforts of Wendy Davis and Hillary Clinton, Beto

O’Rourke is taking a markedly different approach to his own campaign with respect to micro-

targeting— namely, by ditching it almost entirely. By his own admission, O’Rourke’s team

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makes very little use of polling data and absolutely no use of corporate money or Super-PAC

contributions. “Instead of micro-targeting blue enclaves in his uphill race against Cruz,” The

Huffington Post writes, “O’Rourke has visited all of Texas’ 254 counties, including areas so red

‘you can see them glowing from outer space,’ as he put it. He still has no pollster or

speechwriter; instead, he constantly livestreams, a sort of political high wire act.”

Such a strategy is largely at odds with the enormously data-oriented campaigns of other

Democratic candidates such as Hillary Clinton, whose use of algorithms and voter targeting was

criticized in hindsight for being “focused on ensuring voter turnout, rather than attracting voters

from across party lines” (Guild). This outcome is quite to the contrary of what the O’Rourke

team is aiming for in Texas in 2018. “While his campaign has been making some effort to

register new voters, his advisers believe they can find a path to victory within the electorate as it

already exists” (Rice).

O’Rourke has traveled extensively across his massive home state in the hopes of securing

this path. These road trips are geared towards two main positive outcomes: to get potential voters

to know who he is in the first place, and once they come to know him, to get them to like him

both personally and politically.

Being elected to the House of Representatives does not automatically make one a

household name. Fewer than half of citizens across the nation can name their state representative,

and Texans are no exception to this reality. As recently as July, “a Quinnipiac poll found that 43

percent of voters still haven’t heard enough about O’Rourke to form an opinion about him. Only

7 percent of voters said the same of Cruz” (Golshan).

O’Rourke’s relative anonymity at the start of this race was not lost upon him. “Nobody in

Texas probably knew who I was a year ago,” he admitted as he was live-streaming one of his

many campaign road trips. “But [my wife] Amy and I knew that we had to do everything within

our power to make this a better place” (WP Video).

As O’Rouke has continued to travel in support of his campaign— “defying the typical

Democratic strategy of focusing on heavily populated urban areas” (Rice)— he has made clear

efforts to infuse his own personality into his rhetoric and come across as more relatable to his

followers. “O’Rourke stays focused on big-picture ideas, rarely getting into policy details,” The

Washington Post remarks of O’Rourke’s town hall meetings. “He speaks in stories of Texans:

the high school salutatorian who was deported. The teacher who died of the flu because she

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couldn’t afford her prescription. The mentally ill man who purposely gets arrested so he can

receive medical care.” And so on. He also “speaks emotionally about the migrant families who

venture to the border in hopes of finding safety for their children— something that he says “any

human would do” (Johnson).

Such personalized rhetoric “allows voters to feel as though they’re being talked to, as

opposed to targeted.” By deviating from the statistics-heavy approach of microtargeting and

data-crunching, O’Rourke has seemingly succeeded in “breaking down walls that exist between

himself and the voter” (Resnick). This may be O’Rourke’s best chance of winning favor in

regions that have historically been unkind to his fellow Democrats. O’Rourke’s has travelled

throughout those rural environments, trying to make a personal connection with the citizens there

who might otherwise automatically vote against him upon learning of his political affiliation.

On October 22nd, The Washington Post ran a video chronicling O’Rourke’s campaign,

including footage from one of his pit stops in the 5,000-person town of Carrizo Springs. A local

cattle rancher who attended his community talk responded, “What I wanted to hear from him is

why I should support him as a strong Conservative, and the answers I heard pretty much satisfied

me. I think he would represent me in Congress as a Texan, as a conservative Texan, and not

necessarily toe the Democratic Party line. That’s what I really wanted to hear out of him, and I

think I did.” Reactions of this nature are the sort which the “Beto for Senate” team is hoping to

conjure en masse as they make their way across the state of Texas.

One final component to O’Rourke’s surprisingly successful Senate run is his fervent use

of social media. From live-streaming his campaign road trips on Facebook to hosting online

Q&A sessions on Reddit, “he’s mastered social media to connect and collect” (NBC News). In

fact, “some studies have found that he has spent more on social media advertising than any

politician in America other than President Trump” (Ratcliffe). His recent video commentary on

America’s civil rights history “has been viewed on the Facebook page of the liberal media group

NowThis Politics more than 24 million times and immediately set off a Twitter storm” (Benson).

Comparisons to Barack Obama are inevitable. Obama was “one of the first to harness the

power of social media during his 2008 presidential campaign” and “revolutionized how

candidates use the internet to win elections, bringing the race to them through everything from

social networking sites to mobile messaging” (Milburn). Ten years later, O’Rourke’s reliance on

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platforms such as Facebook Live, Twitter and Reddit is essentially “mirroring what Obama did

in 2008” (Milburn).

Both of these young, handsome Democrats have presented themselves via social media as

being “unapologetically progressive [and offering] a vision of post-partisan national unity”

(Goldberg). In these regards, O’Rourke has learned the right lessons from Obama’s surprise

success a decade ago, whereas many of the Democrats have seemingly learned the wrong ones.

It’s not enough to just collect data: you have to “be the the better candidate and [have] a

better message, presented through better storytelling” (Gold). O’Rourke has constructed a

compelling image of himself as a fighter for Texas and supporter of the common man. Combined

with his digital outreach and grassroots fundraising, that has proven to be a potent recipe for

success in state where Democratic candidates are rarely favored to win.

In summary, O’Rourke’s campaign mantra has been that “Texas is not a red state but a

nonvoting state” (Rice). Figures from recent elections support this stance— “in 2016, only about

46 percent of the state’s roughly 20 million voting-age adults made it to the polls, one of the

lowest figures in the country” (Rice). But it is important for candidates not simply to increase

voter participation, but also to win favor from citizens of all political backgrounds and assure

them that their best interests will be protected by the candidate who are asking for their votes.

By making a personal connection with voters, either physically through his extensive

travels or digitally through social media tools, O’Rourke has done his part to achieve a campaign

in which “everyone is heard and listened to and fought for” (WP Video). Whether or not this

strategy earns him a seat in the Senate, it has already made O’Rourke the most competitive

candidate of any Democrat in Texas in the 21st century.

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TED CRUZ

Beto O’Rourke has generated tremendous excitement as a Senate candidate and achieved

record fundraising without accepting any corporate donations, a true sign of a successful people-

based campaign. Yet all the while, Ted Cruz has generally been considered the favorite to win

this race and has never trailed O’Rourke in a statewide poll as of November 3rd. Cruz is stating

common sense when he declares that “there are a lot more conservatives than there are liberals in

the state of Texas” (Abrahams). On top of this political advantage, certain elements of his

campaign strategy have allowed the junior senator to maintain an edge over his opponent in this

unexpectedly tight contest.

Unlike Beto O’Rourke— a phrase which can be used limitless times in reference to Ted

Cruz— the junior senator has historically had a penchant for voter micro-targeting, a tactic that

was a conservative concept from the beginning. In early 2015, almost as soon as Cruz became

the first major candidate to declare his entrance into the upcoming presidential race, he entered

talks with Cambridge Analytica, a political consulting firm founded by conservative

businessmen Steve Bannon and Robert Mercer. Cruz’s team wound up paying $5.8 million in

services to Cambridge Analytica until his campaign was suspended in May 2016.

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The firm was proud of its contributions. “By combining advanced data analytics with

psychological research based off the five factor model for gauging personality traits, OCEAN,

Cambridge Analytica helped the campaign identify likely pro-Cruz caucus voters and reach out

to them with messages tailored to resonate specifically with their personality types,” according to

the company’s website. “This method provided the Cruz campaign with the edge it needed to

spread the candidate's message and drive a come-from-behind victory in the first primary of the

2016 election.”

Cambridge Analytica closed operations this past May in the wake of a controversy

involving the improper extraction of personal data from Facebook users. While Cruz’s

colleagues have distanced themselves from Cambridge Analytica and have insisted that they

were unaware of any wrongdoings at the time they were receiving political aide from the firm,

certain elements of Cruz’s strategy in the 2016 presidential campaign still linger.

Cambridge Analytica persuaded Cruz the presidential hopeful to make use of social

media to micro-target potential voters and collect a database of supporters. Two years later, now

running for Senate re-election, Cruz is again relying heavily on social media and data analysis.

While his social media presence cannot rival that of his competitor— O’Rourke has reportedly

spent more on Facebook ads than any candidate in history— the junior senator regularly updates

his own Facebook and Twitter pages, while also imploring his followers to “be vocal about their

support for him on social media” (Mansfield & Purgahn).

As Cruz explained over the phone to one of his supporters— who was skeptical whether

her candidate was doing enough “to target the evangelicals, the veterans, the youths, the

Hispanics and the blue-collar workers”— his team is “[running] a data-driven campaign so that if

someone cares about veterans issues, we're getting veterans’ messages to them. If someone cares

about Second Amendment issues, we're getting Second Amendment messages to them”

(Gillman).

This last quotation relates to another vigorous element of Cruz’s re-election strategy,

which is to promote himself as a proud Texas native who remains true to his conservative values.

Although he hasn’t traveled to every corner of Texas as O’Rourke has done, Cruz has still

achieved a fair amount of meet-and-greet retail campaigning of his own, starting at the Redneck

Country Club in the Houston suburbs this past April.

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At every turn, Cruz has catered to his conservative followers, “hitting familiar themes

like defending the Constitution, protecting gun rights and securing the country's southern border

with Mexico” (Jeffers). In turn, he has portrayed his opponent “as a liberal who is too radical for

Texas and who wants to steer the state away from the low-tax, low-regulation mantra that

Republicans view as the key to the Texas economy’s success” (Fernandez).

These are messages that Cruz further pounded in his two debates with O’Rourke in

Dallas and San Antonio. He closed out the latter on October 16th by criticizing the “job-killing

regulations” his opponent was seeking and promising to “keep the economic boom we’re

experiencing right now moving” and “to defend jobs, defend the Constitution, and secure our

borders” in his second term in the Senate (Global News).

Beyond promoting his conservative platform, Cruz has also strived to make an emotional

appeal to his fellow Texans. “Tough as Texas,” his campaign slogan, reflects the state’s

resilience in the wake of the devastation wrought by Hurricane Harvey. Since this natural

disaster was concentrated in Cruz’s native Houston region, the senator has taken the response

especially seriously and applauded his conservative followers for doing likewise.

“That’s Texas,” Cruz said in at an April town meeting in Beaumont, with one of the

officers who responded to the Sutherland Springs church shootings in attendance. “Texas is

strong, Texas is independent, Texas is fearless, Texas is free, Texas loves freedom and Texas is

tough." The Texas Tribune described such rhetoric early on his campaign as “abounding signs

that the Cruz Texas elected in 2012 — conservative insurgent, political provocateur — is not

about to tone it down” (Svitek). Over the ensuing six months, there is little sign that Cruz has

altered that stance in any meaningful manner.

Overall, Cruz has taken a less strenuous approach to the campaign than has his underdog

rival, with less fundraising, fewer campaign stops, and not such an unprecedented social media

frenzy. “History and recent elections are still on Ted Cruz’s side, and the dynamics of this state

are still on Ted Cruz’s side,” so that may not make much of difference in the end (Fernandez). If

Cruz is to edge O’Rourke on November 6th, it will largely be thanks to his efforts to promote

himself whenever possible— be it on Twitter, at the televised debates, or while addressing small

crowds at remote town halls— as a candidate who loves Texas and remains dedicated to the

conservative ideals that dominate his home state.

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CONCLUSION

The race for the Texas senate this year has “certainly [been] one of the most closely

watched midterm races in the country” (Brown et al). All the same, both Ted Cruz and Beto

O’Rourke have used very basic language to describe their political strategies throughout this

period of great intensity.

“We have one of the most simple, obvious strategies that I’ve seen employed in a modern

campaign,” says O’Rourke. “We just literally show up everywhere, every time, for everyone”

(ABC News).

“My job is simple,” Cruz says in comparable language. "Make sure conservatives show

up and vote” (Jeffers).

These statements summarize each candidate’s strategy in this race. Basic wisdom tells us

that Texas is a predominantly conservative state and has voted accordingly throughout its recent

history. Cruz has sought to demonstrate to voters that he still represents their values as

conservatives and as Texans. O’Rourke has done everything in his power to draw voters across

party lines and bring them onto his side. He has put astonishing effort into his campaign travels,

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grassroots fundraising, and social media outreach and has thus managed to make the race much

tighter than could have realistically been expected back in the spring.

Polls throughout this race indicate that those efforts will not quite be enough come

Election Day. “Cruz has built-in name identification, conservative credentials and an ‘R’ behind

his name, so his candidacy was effectively born on third base,” as a political science professor at

the University of Houston observes (Fernandez). What’s more, “Texas in 2018 is at what some

might see as the plateau of more than two decades of solid Republican rule,” the Texas Politics

Project remarks. “Democrats have no leverage” (WP Video).

Yet even if he does not make his way to the Senate this fall, O’Rourke will be

remembered for running what he himself describes as “the largest grassroots campaign this state

has ever seen, funded by people and only people in every single one of the counties of Texas

every single day” (NBC News). His conduct throughout this election will also likely produce

some important long-term payoffs.

As recent elections have demonstrated, Democratic candidates have done well amongst

voters in Texas’ urban areas— and as the state becomes steadily urbanized, with several of the

nation’s fastest-growing cities within its borders, Democrats are eyeing the day when the state

could be brought back under their control. “The idea is that Texas is ripe for the picking,” says

Rick Klein of ABC News. “It is powered by a growing minority population, a growing young

voter population. It is almost inevitable that Texas eventually turns blue. The question is, did

Beto O’Rourke find this moment?”

The answer will be revealed on November 6th. But O’Rourke’s efforts to better promote

the modern-day Democratic agenda across Texas will likely prove to be valuable to the party

either way. As divergent as their political platforms may be, both Cruz and O’Rourke have

shared a certain desire to reduce their dependency on impersonal campaign tactics like micro-

targeting and corporate contributions, while demonstrating their concern for the variety of

pressing issues currently facing Texas and its citizens. This will likely be the blueprint for all

campaigns in the Lone Star State looking forward.

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Photo Credits

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Clipart, Pd4Pic. Texas Silhouette Clipart, www.laoblogger.com/texas-silhouette-clipart.html.Gallagher, Maggie. “Cruz Stump Speech in Iowa: End Common Core, Abolish the Department of Ed.” The National Pulse, 5 Jan. 2017,

www.thenationalpulse.com/common-core/cruz-stump-speech-in-iowa-end-common-core-abolish-the-department-of-ed/ Relman, Eliza. “Protesters Heckled Ted Cruz and His Wife out of a DC Restaurant, and Beto O'Rourke Has Come to His Opponent's Defense.” Business Insider, Business Insider, 25 Sept. 2018,

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Modern Language Association 8th edition formatting by CitationMachine.net.

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