Ted Cruz Wanted Poster

Submission 7,457

Part of a series on Ted Cruz. [View Related Entries]

About

Ted Cruz Wanted Poster refers to a viral campaign advertisement for Texas Senator Ted Cruz. The poster features Cruz's head photoshopped with a cigarette in his mouth and on to the body of a muscular and tattooed man.

Origin

On March 14th, 2014, Brietbart^[3] reported that photoshopped wanted posters of Senator Ted Cruz were spotted in various locations in Los Angeles. The following day, Cruz tweeted^[4] one of the images, writing, "Saw this, but noticed an error. So I wanted to make one thing clear: I don't smoke cigarettes." The tweet (shown below) received more than 3,300 retweets and 2,300 likes in four-and-a-half years.

Spread

On February 26th, 2015, at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), the artist Sabo began selling wanted posters featuring Ted Cruz's face on someone else's body.^[1] That day, Washington Post reporter Katie Zezima tweeted ^[2] a picture of the image with the caption, "Ted Cruz 'Blacklisted and Loving It' all American tour 2016 #cpac2015." The tweet (shown below, left) received more than 30 retweets and 25 likes in three and a half years.

Later that year, the Cruz campaign began using the image in its promotion of the Ted Cruz 2016 presidential campaign. On September 9th, Twitter^[3] user @teddygoff published a variation of the image that was used in an email from Cruz's campagin. They captioned the post, "This is a thing that's real." The post (shown below, center) received more than 130 retweets and 160 likes in three years.

ON August 31st, 2018, Mashable ^[5] reported that the Rockwall County Republican Party had been using variation of the poster for Cruz's senate reelection campaign. The posts have since been deleted. However, Twitter^[6] user @rez512 posted a series of screenshots of the posts (shown below, right).