The Ted Cruz–Zodiac meme is a mock-conspiracy theory popularized on the Internet by opponents of Ted Cruz's candidacy for President in 2015–16. The internet meme facetiously suggested that United States Senator and former 2016 presidential candidate Ted Cruz was the Zodiac Killer, an unidentified Californian serial killer of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Cruz, born 1970, could not have committed these murders, which began before his birth. Circulators of the meme do not genuinely believe that he was the Zodiac Killer, citing the absurdity of its premise; NPR wrote that the meme captured "a feeling they have about Cruz: they think he's creepy. And they want to point that out, as clearly as they can."
Contents
Origin and spread
A January 2016 investigation by Miles Klee of The Daily Dot found the first use of the meme to be by a Twitter user in March 2013, as Cruz was speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference and vowing to repeal the Affordable Care Act. The meme was not repeated until November 2014, by another Twitter user writing about Cruz's proposal against net neutrality.
It continued in obscurity up to February 2016, when another Twitter user used Photoshop to edit a picture of a Republican debate in order to include "Is Ted Cruz the Zodiac Killer?" in the interactive ticker at the bottom. That month, "is ted cruz the zodiac killer" was the second highest suggestion in Google's autocomplete for "is ted", but by April it was not in the autocomplete at all. News.com.au writer Matthew Dunn suggested that Google was censoring the search term, showing evidence that it got 89% of total searches when compared to other terms in the autocomplete.
In April 2016, the Houston Chronicle said the meme "...has a following. A Facebook group named for the meme has more than 27,000 members. A Google search turns up 621,000 hits, including exploratory articles by some of the biggest news publications on the web".
In popular culture
After the edited image showing the question on Google trends, the meme spread into popular culture. Books about Cruz being the Zodiac Killer, including romantic ones, were listed on Amazon.com.
In February 2016, Public Policy Polling asked registered voters in Florida ahead of the Republican primary if they believed Cruz to be the Zodiac Killer; 10% believed and 28% were not sure. The other 62% did not think he was.
Comedian Larry Wilmore made references to the meme in his April 2016 routine at the White House Correspondents' Dinner, including a joke that Cruz was not campaigning to win the nomination, but to continue a murder spree.
Also that month, a cocktail named "Ted Cruz is the Zodiac Killer" went on sale at a dive bar in Montrose, Houston, garnished with plastic machetes. Its creator Julie Lozano discovered the meme through the Facebook group Bernie Sanders' Dank Meme Stash.
The meme has been repeated, without disclaimer, in anti-Cruz opinion pieces in GQ and the Chicago Tribune.
Reception
Lindsey Martin, a Twitter user who helped circulate the meme, told NPR that she did so because it is "so obviously untrue...if there was any way that it could possibly be true I would be scared to joke about it just because of the repercussions". The Verge writer Kaitlyn Tiffany opined that some may consider the subject of the meme to be "distasteful and irresponsible, even dangerous". Leigh Alexander considered its spread an example of the growing political engagement of youth, writing that in such memes, "the political figure is exaggerated, his context made grotesque or fantastical, just as in traditional political cartooning." According to Lozano, the point of the meme is to "[demonize] his character". Heidi Cruz responded to the meme by stating that she has "been married to him for 15 years, and I know pretty well who he is, so it doesn't bother me at all. There's a lot of garbage out there".