The Lone Star Long Shot 

Who Wants to Topple Ted Cruz

By Michael Tackett
Photographs by Tamir Kalifa
 Feb. 19, 2018
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Representative Beto O’Rourke arrived for a Town Hall event in Lufkin, Tex., recently.

BEAUMONT, Tex. — Operating on two hours’ sleep, Beto O’Rourke was 20

hours into his day and looked it. His white shirt and gray slacks were an
accordion of wrinkles. His hair, flecked with gray, drooped on his forehead
and small dark rings had formed under his eyes.

But he hadn’t lost his voice. The Democratic congressman from El Paso
was speaking to a crowd of several hundred at Suga’s restaurant, 830 miles
from home, trying to make an improbable case: that he can defeat Texas’
incumbent Republican senator, Ted Cruz.

Democrats need to pick up two seats in the midterm elections to win

control of the Senate, but they also must defend incumbents in 10 states
that President Trump won. Mr. Cruz is seen as safer than, say, Dean Heller,
Nevada’s Republican senator, or the seats in Arizona and Tennessee that
are being vacated by incumbents. And with Democratic money playing
defense for incumbents in Missouri, Indiana, West Virginia and elsewhere,
Mr. O’Rourke expects no cavalry from Washington to come help him.
But Democrats will need wins wherever they can get them — so the long-
shot is going it alone.
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The Brandon Community Center in Lufkin.

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Laura Bowman announced supporters of Mr. O'Rourke raised $1,200 for his campaign.
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Mr. O'Rourke arrived for a town hall event in Wharton, Texas.

Mr. O’Rourke told the crowd at Suga’s that the “Dreamers” — young
immigrants brought to the country illegally as children — should be
protected. No wall should be built on the border with a friendly country.
College must be more affordable. Women deserve access to reproductive
health services. All Muslims should not be banned, and the press is not the
enemy of the people.

He appealed to their sense of virtue. “This smallness, this bigotry, this

paranoia, this anxiety,” he said, cadence accelerating, “we’ve got to be for
the big, aspirational, ambitious things.”

He appealed to their sense of humor. “There’s a reason that Congress has

an approval rating of around nine percent. Nine percent! Communism ten
percent. Gonorrhea eight percent. We’re right in the middle.”

And he appealed to their anger at Washington. The “system is rigged,” he

said, adding, “I can tell you that access is purchased, that votes are bought
and paid for, that outcomes are determined before you have a chance to
call your member of Congress or senator.”

The crowd cheered, they hooted, they left saying things like “he was great”
and “I’m in.”
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A donation bin was passed around the room in Lufkin.

Before Beaumont, Mr. O’Rourke spoke to town halls this month in Lufkin
and Woodville, deeply conservative places where Democrats are rarely
seen. “It takes guts to come to this area,” one woman in Woodville said.
The man who introduced him in Lufkin had just one request, that he
refrain from swearing, an admonition that Mr. O’Rourke heeded in Lufkin
but not in Beaumont.

Mr. O’Rourke is favored to win his party primary next month and challenge
Mr. Cruz. But his odds in November are beyond long. No Democrat has
won a statewide office in Texas since 1994, the year before Amazon sold its
first book.

By the calculations of Mike Baselice, a Republican pollster in Austin,

demographic changes might make Texas competitive in 2032, certainly not
in 2018. Mr. O’Rourke’s quest, he said, is “same book, different chapter” of
other Democratic hopefuls. “This is not a level playing field here.”

It has been so bleak for Democrats in Texas that they define victory in
terms of the size of their losses. A running joke in Mr. O’Rourke’s speeches
is that he has almost convinced his mother, Melissa, a Republican, to vote
for him.

If the hill weren’t steep enough, Mr. O’Rourke also has refused to hire
outside consultants or pollsters, and he will only accept contributions from
individuals. He has no interest in using big data. When he tells this to
Democratic colleagues in the House, some have simply turned and walked
away from him, unable to take him seriously.
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But there is power in the giant-killer narrative and signs that his anti-
campaign playbook campaign is working. He raised $2.4 million in the last
quarter, and gets applause when he notes that was $500,000 more than
Mr. Cruz took in.

He has a restless energy that has put him in 217 of Texas 254 counties,
driving tens of thousands of miles, fueled by bad coffee and Hostess
cupcakes that supporters bring him.
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Mr. O'Rourke's schedule for a day of campaigning.

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Mr. O'Rourke stopped at a gas station near Brenham, Tex.
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Chris Evans, Mr. O'Rourke's communications director, recorded a Facebook live video in
the parking lot of their hotel in Beaumont, Tex.

In Lufkin, he was greeted with chants of “Beto, Beto, Beto.” His campaign
took in $1,258 in checks and cash dropped into a large jar.
“I think he can win. I think he can inspire Texans,” said Susan McCulley,
adding, “we’re not just mad, we’re scared.”

Another supporter, Ferryn Martin, said, “In 2010, the Tea Party was mad.
This year, we are mad.”

Mr. O’Rourke tries to tap into that emotion. He livestreams almost every
aspect of his campaign — the coffees, the town halls, “bowling with Beto,”
stops at Whataburger, the drives between stops, which often include calls
to voters and activists and from his wife, Amy. Driving with his left forearm
and right elbow on the steering wheel, he asked her about the science fair
projects of their three children.

His theory of the case is that he can make the sale in rural Texas in part
simply by showing up. If he can cut down Mr. Cruz’s margins there and
generate energy in urban precincts and suburbs, he can become the first
Democrat since Lloyd Bentsen in 1988 to win a Texas Senate seat.

Democrats in Texas have long been saying that the demographic changes
sweeping the state, fueled by a surge in the Latino population, would
eventually make the state two-party competitive, but even some of the
more optimistic forecasts don’t have that happening until 2024. Still, there
are other factors at work that add to their hopes. The number of college-
educated residents in the state increased by 20 percent from 2006 to 2016,
according to Lloyd Potter, the Texas state demographer. Rural areas are
losing population while urban and suburban areas are gaining.

“If one was able to figure out how to turn out the Latino vote and the
African-American vote, that could change things pretty dramatically,” Mr.
Potter said. “The issue is how far-off in the horizon it is.”
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Velenta Mathews-Hunter, a retired school teacher, shook hands with Mr. O'Rourke in
Orange, Tex.
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A cardboard cut-out of John wayne in Robert’s Restaurant and Meat Market in Orange.
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But President Trump, who carried the state by nine percentage points, is
complicating conventional analysis. “All things being equal, if there wasn’t
a Trump, it would be in the mid 2020s until the state would get
competitive,” said Russ Tidwell, a Democratic consultant who has worked
in the state for decades. “But Trump makes other things possible.”

And Mr. O’Rourke’s campaign is all about a sense of the possible.

His biography does not have any of the bootstraps appeal of a Lyndon
Johnson, or even Mr. Cruz, the son of immigrant parents. Mr. O’Rourke’s
family was well-to-do in El Paso. Born Robert Francis O’Rourke, he has
been known as “Beto” from infancy. His voice shows no hint of a Texas
accent until his says his first name and sounds like he is speaking Spanish
— which he does, fluently.

He was sent to Woodberry Forest boarding school in Virginia, then

Columbia, where he was captain of the crew team. He played in a punk
rock band, hauled expensive art and enjoyed the wanderlust that a young
man from a wealthy family can afford. He went back to El Paso and started
a technology company, then ran for City Council before winning his House
seat in 2012, defeating an incumbent.

In the House, he has hardly left a footprint. He did not vote for
Representative Nancy Pelosi to be the Democratic leader, and Mr.
O’Rourke, 45, thinks his party in Congress needs fresh leaders, which is
one reason he supports term limits.
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Cynthia Cano, Mr. O'Rourke's campaign logistics and events director, with him for an
event in Beaumont.

Mr. Cruz, who did not respond to a request to discuss the race, has never
been as popular as Republicans like former governors George W. Bush or
Rick Perry, but he has been tactically adroit and plays well to more
conservative voters. He has an uneasy alliance with Mr. Trump that started
with the president calling him “Lyin’ Ted” during the primaries and has
evolved into invitations to the White House.

Mr. O’Rourke’s is an emotive approach, Mr. Cruz’s one of cold-eyed

precision.

“I don’t think he is a flash in the pan,” William Martin, a scholar at the

Baker Institute at Rice University said of Mr. O’Rourke. “He’s young and
fresh, and he’s just intrinsically so much more attractive than Ted Cruz for
voters who don’t already have their minds made up.”

Mr. O’Rourke knows Mr. Cruz is a skilled debater, a proven fund-raiser and
a candidate who showed in his presidential campaign that he could
leverage analytics into millions of votes. And the congressman has
vulnerabilities. Mr. O’Rourke has been arrested twice, once for a college
prank, a second time, in 1998, for what he called the “unforgivably” bad
decision to drive after “having too much to drink.” Both charges were
dismissed.

His mother receives fund-raising solicitations from Mr. Cruz, who calls her
son a “Nancy Pelosi liberal,” no doubt a preview of things to come.

But Mr. O’Rourke also will use Mr. Cruz’s well-observed ambition against
him, and said that the incumbent’s real goal is another White House run.
He cites a letter that Mr. Cruz sent to Gov. Kim Reynolds, Republican of
Iowa, talking about visiting all of Iowa’s 99 counties.

“I know he hasn’t been to all 254 of Texas’ counties,” Mr. O’Rourke said.
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Mr. O'Rourke at Suga's restaurant in Beaumont.

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Mr. O'Rourke's campaign buttons are designed in the likeness of Robert F. Kennedy, his
political hero.
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Mr. O'Rourke talked to his wife, Amy, in his hotel room in Bay City, Tex.
Texas is so vast that it is nearly impossible to travel the entire state the way
that Mr. O’Rourke has chosen to, largely by car, over state highways and
rural roads, but he seems undeterred and drives most of the miles himself,
with aides in passenger seats.

Over lunch at the Lufkin BBQ, Mr. O’Rourke said his campaign strategy
was in part drawn from the 1968 presidential campaign of his political
hero, Robert F. Kennedy, long on hope and aspiration.

Mr. Kennedy was not driven by “polls or consultants, but he really seemed
to be grounded in the things that he found important,” he said, adding that
he often seemed to be going directly against the advice of what was going to
be popular.

Those seemed to be the words of a long-shot, a candidate with nothing to

lose.
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Mr. O'Rourke at an event in Woodville, Tex.

A version of this article appears in print on Feb. 20, 2018, on
Page A9 of the New York edition with the headline: A Blue Spark
In the Heart Of Deep-Red Cruz Country. Order Reprints | Today’s
Paper | Subscribe
 Why Texas Democrats Are Betting on
Beto O’Rourke

By Mimi Swartz
 May 19, 2017
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Beto O’Rourke campaigning in Dallas last month. Texas Democrats are hopeful that he can
defeat Senator Ted Cruz in 2018CreditCreditLM Otero/Associated Press
HOUSTON — It’s happening again. The stirring of the heart. The
quickening of the pulse. The desire to abandon reality, even if you suspect
there’s a world of hurt to come. Love, thy name is Beto.

If you haven’t heard, our junior senator from Texas, a.k.a. Darth Vader,
a.k.a. Voldemort, a.k.a. Ted Cruz, has a challenger for 2018, a 44-year-old
Democratic congressman from El Paso by the name of Beto O’Rourke. Mr.
O’Rourke may still be unknown to many, even in the state, but for those
searching for a savior of the Turn Texas Blue variety, the crush is
blossoming. Among statewide Democratic insiders, Beto is already a
member of the First Name Club, with Madonna and Cher.

We’ve been here before, of course. Most cruelly in 2014, with State Senator
Wendy Davis’s quixotic quest to defeat Greg Abbott. The livestreaming of
her filibuster to kill a heinous anti-abortion bill on the floor of the State
Legislature turned Ms. Davis overnight into the Great Democratic Hope of
Texas. She was smart (Harvard Law School). She was gorgeous
(remember the fangirl spread in Vogue?). And she had a respectable
progressive record as both a city councilwoman and a state representative
from Fort Worth. Wendy was gonna do it!

She didn’t. Our right-wing governor crushed her by about 20 points. Yes,
there were some dumb campaign choices, and not even the truest believers
could blame sexism entirely for the loss, but the bottom line was that the
Republican Party was still running Texas.

Two years later, Hillary Clinton thought she had a chance to carry the state
in the presidential election. There was some evidence she might: Texas’
biggest cities are resoundingly blue, and respectable pollsters were
predicting the time had come.

It hadn’t. Donald Trump trounced her by 52 percent to 43 percent.

Cockeyed optimists in the Democratic Party claimed that Mrs. Clinton lost
by less than anticipated, but the basic math between the parties here
remains unchanged, as does the conventional wisdom. The best advice for
a Democrat running in Texas? Invite the press to watch you set your
campaign funds on fire.

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But then Mr. O’Rourke showed up. This time will be different, or so his
proponents say. He is liberal and progressive, but also technologically and
economically literate in a way that should appeal to business. He speaks
fluent Spanish. He has served his district well, especially by touting the
charms and economic opportunities (as opposed to the crime) on the El
Paso-Juarez border.

Older Democrats like to compare him to the Kennedys, in his politics and
looks. (He is handsome and toothy, with a thatch of shimmering brown
hair.) Millennials like him because he once played in a punk band called
Foss, because he started a software company, and because he has a few
things in common with Bernie Sanders. Like him, Beto promises to go it
alone, without support from consultants and political action committees.

Mr. O’Rourke also knows how to brawl. He pulled off two upsets, the first
to become a city councilman, and the second and more important in his
2012 congressional victory against Silvestre Reyes, a 16-year incumbent
who is Mexican-American.
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Mr. O’Rourke also does savvy social media. When a snowstorm closed
Washington airports in March, Mr. O’Rourke and a fellow Texan
congressman, the Republican Will Hurd, livestreamed their road trip from
Texas to the Capitol, the subtext being that some Democrats
and someRepublicans can occupy the same space without looking like
they’re auditioning for Comedy Capers. Besides, it was a neat way for Mr.
O’Rourke to introduce himself to a national audience: Along with
traditional media outlets, 2.6 million Facebook viewers checked out the
guys as they chomped on junk food in between discussions of Big Issues.
They even got a shout out from Mark Zuckerberg.

Then there is the spread of so-called anti-Trump sentiment — the same one
that Democrats in Kansas and Georgia and Montana are also pinning their
hopes on. Mr. O’Rourke has shown that he, too, can hold a rally. The
crowds that greeted him in Houston, San Antonio and even Midland, once
home to the Bush cabal, have been like Elvis concerts.

Finally, there was a recent poll by the Texas Lyceum, a nonpartisan

leadership organization, which doesn’t bode well for Ted Cruz. It showed
San Antonio’s high-profile congressman, Joaquin Castro — he of the famed
Castro twins — winning a hypothetical 2018 Senate runoff by 4 percentage
points, with 35 percent to Mr. Cruz’s 31 percent. Worse for Mr. Cruz was
that he tied at 30 percent in a match-up against a total newcomer: a
pipsqueak named Beto O’Rourke.

Subsequently, Mr. Castro decided the time wasn’t right — see Texas
Democrats, above — and never declared his candidacy. Unless someone
else decides to run in the Republican or Democratic primaries, that leaves
Mr. O’Rourke alone, slingshot in hand, against Mr. Cruz.

So that’s the good news, the stuff Democratic dreams are made of.

Here’s the bad news: Thus far, Mr. O’Rourke has a $400,000 war chest
compared with Mr. Cruz’s $4.2 million, a big deficit to make up when the
cost of running a statewide campaign in Texas starts at $1 million a week.
There’s the power of incumbency, too. Mr. Cruz may be bruised, but he’s
hardly bloodied. He even has 2.6 million Twitter followers to Mr.
O’Rourke’s 25,000, proving once again that social media is not just for
hipsters.

Some believe that a Democratic primary race, however divisive, would have
prepped the victor to withstand Mr. Cruz’s ruthless campaign tactics. (Mr.
O’Rourke had two arrests in the 1990s, one for D.U.I. and another for
breaking and entering. Though both incidents have been explained away as
youthful indiscretions, Mr. Cruz will be sure to turn them into high crimes
and misdemeanors.)
Finally, there’s the biggest problem of all: Democrats haven’t won a
statewide race in Texas since 1994. John Cornyn, the senior Texas senator,
has described Mr. O’Rourke’s run as “a suicide mission.”

Maybe. Probably. But this is Texas: If you can’t dream big, why bother?

Mimi Swartz, an executive editor at Texas Monthly, is a

contributing opinion writer.

A version of this article appears in print on May 20, 2017, on

Page A23 of the New York edition with the headline: Why Blue
Texas Is Betting on Beto. Order Reprints | Today’s
Paper | Subscribe