The article, “What Kind of Man Spends Millions to Elect Ted Cruz?” Written by Zachary Mider of the Bloomberg’s politics, talks about one of the country’s most influential republicans, Robert Mercer and his vast network of assets and how he maintains links with those asset in question. The article also goes on to discuss various influence that made the link to Robert Mercer possible for that particular asset and partnership. This political network, Mr. Mercer has attained is mostly through hard work and with the influence of having deep pockets. Robert Mercer, is a computer programmer and hedge fund manager in New York, he is one of the republicans with enormous money and wealth to influence voter’s decision, through the media. He is a man that is affiliated with various organizations, such as Cambridge Analytica, a data company that builds psychological profiles of voters, He is also affiliated with other media outlets such as breitbart.com. In the article Mercer sees a similarity in ideas between himself and republican political candidates, such as Sen Ted Cruz which is in a favor of making the dollar backed by gold. The Homophily theory is depicted in this article, with this relationship between Mr. Mercer and Sen Ted Cruz to fund Senator Ted Cruz with an approximated donation of about 11million dollars. In class we have discussed some terminology and the structural nature of networks and the type of social influence. Mr. Mercer’s network is a large and powerful one featuring, powerful individuals in his Network, he is an advocate for ideas such as the dollar being backed by the gold standard and also a strong advocate for less government interventions in the financial system. These causes and ideas has brought him to endorse various political candidates that have similar viewpoints as he does. Although I must mention that the case Citizen vs FEC, which allowed independent political funding, was held in Jan 2010, the final ruling said that this is a right of the citizen as part of the first amendment. Critics of this ruling suggest that this will favor those individuals with large network and influence, which can lead to more social dilemma and divide also causing political candidates to have Super-pac . Super-pacs are a group of individuals that have similar objective, their relationship is based on the link they share with each other. Just as the Homophily theory states that people with similarities tend to select each other this could lead to selection bias.
Economic Theory of Networks at Temple University 