Ted Cruz has hit third place (behind Carson and Trump) and double-digits in Iowa. He’s taken over Rubio’s third place spot according to Bloomberg.

Texas Senator Ted Cruz, at 10 percent, is the only other candidate [besides Carson and Trump] in double digits. He’s followed by Florida Senator Marco Rubio at 9 percent. The horse-race numbers for the top four mirror a Quinnipiac University poll released Thursday, with the main exception being that the earlier poll had Rubio in third place with 13 percent.

As he continues to campaign in Iowa, Cruz emphasizes the import of the 2016 presidential election. He tweets:

The stakes of this election are high: https://t.co/lg7v8xrudY Join us: https://t.co/R1EkwUz9Id — Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) October 24, 2015

The high stakes to which he refers are those of the makeup of the Supreme Court. Cruz told the Des Moines Register that we are one liberal Supreme Court justice away from “irreparable damage.” The Register reports:

The U.S. is “one justice away” from a liberal Supreme Court causing enough damage for the nation to become unrecognizable, Texas Republican Ted Cruz said Friday. “One more liberal justice and our right to keep and bear arms is taken away from us by an activist court. One more liberal justice and they begin sandblasting and bulldozing veterans memorials throughout this country. One more liberal justice and we lose our sovereignty to the United Nations and the World Court,” Cruz said when responding to how he would treat appointing justices to the court.

In a Friday interview with With All Due Respect, Cruz points out differences between himself and the other GOP candidates.

Watch:

One of the points that Cruz also makes in this video is how well his campaign is doing financially. Part of this financial success is due to his campaign’s unique crowdfunding program. Touted as the “world’s first presidential crowdfunding platform,” CruzCrowd focuses on small, grassroots donors and building a “militia” across the nation of supporters who can participate in his campaign by helping with fundraising efforts at the local level.

The Washington Post reports:

Dubbed CruzCrowd, the web-based system is effectively a mash-up of the two main drivers of political fundraising: small online giving and the bundling of large contributions. Supporters who sign up to be part of “the militia” will begin earning American Revolution-themed badges as they recruit new “patriots.” There is no minimum donation to participate. “The idea is that it shouldn’t just be millionaires who bundle donations,” said Chris Wilson, director of research and analytics for the Cruz campaign. As with high-dollar bundlers, CruzCrowd participants have the chance to climb tiers based on their fundraising totals. Everyone who signs up starts as a Colonist, then reaches Delegate after raising $1,000 and Signer after raising $5,000. The top tier, Federalist, requires collecting $10,000. As participants expand their fundraising networks, they will compete for perks such as riding on the campaign bus with Cruz and flying on his campaign plane.

With innovative ideas like this, the Cruz campaign is organizing a grassroots network that seems to be effective in terms of his fundraising, and with Cruz emphasizing the importance of the 2016 election in terms of the Supreme Court and other high stakes issues like ObamaCare, the IRS, Common Core, and Obama’s disastrous Iran deal, he seems likely to continue gaining momentum.



