From National Journal
“Despite all the digital sophisticationand a few misstepspropping up his presidential campaign, Rand Paul is already lagging on Facebook behind one of his biggest rivals: Ted Cruz.
Cruz, who formally launched his White House bid last month, attracted nearly three times as much buzzmeasured in likes, posts, comments, and shareson Facebook during the 24-hour window surrounding his announcement as Paul, who announced on Tuesday.”
From Breitbart:
“First off, Roe noted, Cruz waited until the end of a Federal Election Commission (FEC) fundraising quarter to announce he was runningmeaning he had a lot less time to pull in big bucks to show off his viability as a candidate.
The last person who announced the same time [in a quarter] that we announced was Tim Pawlenty [in 2012]. Pawlenty raised $160,000 in the first nine days of his presidential campaign. We did that within about the first 9 minutes of his speech, Roe said.
That themebreak all the rulespermeates Cruzs campaign and team.
We view this race completely differently than most do, Roe said. If its a rule thats in place, we want to break it.
In addition, Cruzs team is aiming to hire key grassroots activists in major states around the country to build a groundswell of support for his presidential campaign, rather than bring in political insiders. That way, in each key state, Cruz has devoted and loyal supporters fighting for him and his message, rather than just for a paycheck.
What we are doing is we are hiring activists in these states, Roe said. We have activists who believe in the campaign who people in these local communities trust.
and ‘The last thing I would say is we are building a campaign not with data as a resource, but with data as the central point of our decision making, Roe said, noting that Team Cruz isnt going about data the way normal campaigns do.
Were baking data into everything we do, into how we are going to engage each individual donor and voter in the process to see how theyre going to be able to get the message of our campaign, Roe said.
Roe noted that the campaign is taking messages of what voters want to hear about right to their doorsteps, using issue ID to figure out what it is they care about most then convincing them that Cruz has the best solution to their needs. Its very business-like, almost like a sales pitch, aimed at engaging voters to find a way to sell them on how Cruz is the best product in the 2016 field. They are working to define the largely-undefined Cruz to primary and general election voters in a way that they expect will help them see that Cruz is the best available decision they can make. Essentially, if someone wants to discuss Obamacare instead of tax cuts, Roe said, then Cruzs team will talk to them about Obamacare. That doesnt mean Cruz isnt strong on tax cuts, too, but talking to voters about what they are interested in hearing about makes convincing them to eventually vote for him when the time comes much easier.
So the engagement of those voters is how were approaching thisnot just talking at them with what we want to say, but communicate with them about what they want to talk about, Roe said.”
“....Rand Paul is already lagging on Facebook behind one of his biggest rivals: Ted Cruz.”
I’m for Cruz and I don’t have a facebook account. I would suspect there is a large percentage of older, conservative voters that can say the same thing.