If Beto Loses Tomorrow I m Never Talking to Another White Man Again Twitter
Beto O'Rourke Dreams of One Texas. Ted Cruz Sees Another Clearly.
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LONGVIEW, Tex. — Beto O'Rourke was racing left again, insisting he knew what he was doing.
"Hydroplaning there a petty flake," he said softly, doing 75 in the passing lane through an East Texas downpour, double-fisting beef jerky in his silvery pickup.
This self-assurance was understandable. In his campaign against Senator Ted Cruz, Mr. O'Rourke has been attempting the Texas equivalent of walking on h2o — winning statewide equally a liberal Democrat — without notwithstanding losing his balance. There is bipartisan consensus, including from Mr. Cruz, that Mr. O'Rourke could actually prevail in November — maybe — if the blueish wave crests just so. And now, 15 days into a 34-solar day route trip, Mr. O'Rourke was fifty miles from some other disarmingly large crowd in a typically red canton, primed to cheer his calls for brash progressivism deep in the heart of Trump land.
New gun restrictions. Fifteen-dollar minimum wage. Marijuana offenses expunged from abort records.
"This moment, this year, this fourth dimension is not easy," Mr. O'Rourke thundered one time he reached the stage, past turns swearing playfully in two languages to brand his case. "It'due south not for the faint of centre."
But why not effort? This is Texas, he reminded them. Or it can be.
For a quarter century now, a bluish Texas has seemed both inevitable and impossible, the central political contradiction in a state defined past them — where conservatives joke that the best affair almost Austin, the left-leaning upper-case letter, is its proximity to Texas; where the largest American flags are oftentimes flown by those agitating for outright secession.
Any breakthrough, Democrats take long believed, would exist borne of demographics and triangulation: Focus on the cities, with their surging Hispanic populations and creeping cosmopolitanism. Edge to the middle a chip to bring in wary moderates. And impress upon voters but how extreme the incumbents had become.
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Mr. O'Rourke, a 45-year-old congressman from El Paso, has resolved to ignore basically all of this. He says relatively little well-nigh Mr. Cruz on the logic that everyone already knows nigh him. He has visited each of the state's 254 counties, he says, considering he would not vote for a political party that never showed up in his boondocks, either.
More than anything, Mr. O'Rourke has made clear that he will not modulate his politics, betting that he can energize and actuate nonvoters from past years, particularly younger ones, with left-wing authenticity and genial hustle. Information technology is a model being pursued past progressives across the country, oft with considerable success. Most recently, Andrew Gillum, the mayor of Tallahassee, Fla., won an upset victory in that land'due south Autonomous primary for governor with a similar message of unflinching liberalism and generational change.
Mr. O'Rourke has divers the philosophy with a line borrowed from Jim Hightower, a prominent activist and commentator who was once Texas agriculture commissioner: "The only thing you'll find in the heart of the road," Mr. O'Rourke said in Houston recently, "are yellowish lines and dead armadillos."
After that day , later a bit more driving, there it was, between a shuttered general store and a giant roadside cross: a dead armadillo, hugging the yellow line.
If proved true, Mr. O'Rourke's theory of the case, as much equally any strategic gamble in these midterms, would have the issue of reshaping his state'southward very political identity. In the short run, voter enthusiasm for Mr. O'Rourke is expected to boost Democratic congressional candidates this autumn in districts in and around the state's largest cities, where Mr. O'Rourke'due south popularity can help down-election even if he loses his own race. Recent public polling shows Mr. Cruz leading by mid- to low-single digits, though the senator has argued that these estimates undersell his edge.
In the long run, Democrats still believe that Texas will eventually move their way for skilful. President Trump won hither by nine percent points, barely ameliorate than his showing in Ohio — and seven points worse than Mitt Romney'south margin in 2012.
"The winds have quit bravado from the right," said Bill Miller, a veteran lobbyist who has worked with members of both parties. "They haven't begun blowing the other style. Only the winds are shifting."
Many Democrats in Washington remain skeptical of Mr. O'Rourke's chances, even as they marvel at his fund-raising totals — over $10 meg final quarter, more than double Mr. Cruz'southward haul. The political party sees riper pickup opportunities for Senate seats in Arizona, Nevada and Tennessee and is expected to spend its money accordingly — to say zero of its efforts to defend incumbents in several states that Mr. Trump carried in 2016.
Prototype
Still, in public and in private, Mr. Cruz, 47, has expressed something budgeted genuine alarm, enough that Mr. Trump, in one case his bitter rival for the 2022 Republican presidential nomination, plans to come campaign with him. (In a tweet on Friday, the president pledged to fill "the biggest stadium in Texas we can find" for a rally in October.) Mr. Cruz has likewise impressed upon his colleagues that the threat from Mr. O'Rourke is real, requesting the party'southward financial help during a contempo Senate lunch.
"The extreme left, they're energized," Mr. Cruz told supporters at a bar in Brenham, where a floorboard splinter stuck to one of his ostrich boots. "They're filled with rage and fury."
And yet.
"This is Texas," he said, three times in an hour, as if to reassure. Or information technology has been.
In an interview afterward at some other bar, Mr. Cruz got to talking about Texas stereotypes — what outsiders get wrong about the identify, in his view, and about this race.
"Texas is America on steroids," Mr. Cruz said, citing his constituents' "borderland independence." "The ethos of our state is, 'Give me a horse and a gun and an open plain and we can conquer the globe.'"
This sounded a lot like the stereotype.
"Sure," Mr. Cruz conceded. "It's a stereotype that Texans like barbecue. It as well happens that pretty much all Texans like charcoal-broil."
And this, equally much equally any campaign turnout projection or messaging tactic, feels like the core question: How truthful is the stereotype of Texas, withal, in 2018?
Mr. Cruz reached for his Texas-brewed beer, in a room decorated with a longhorn logo and a Texas flag. All around him, people seemed to be enjoying their barbecue.
A irresolute Texas. But a liberal Texas?
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For much of the 20th century, there were effectively ii parties in Texas.
"Bourgeois Democrat," said Mark McKinnon, a onetime adviser to George Westward. Bush, "and progressive Democrat."
Things changed. Former aides to Mr. Bush, who in 1994 beat Ann Richards, the terminal Autonomous governor, doubt that he would survive a Republican chief today. His successors rejected an expansion of Medicaid, the program signed into law by a Texan president, Lyndon B. Johnson.
Before Mr. O'Rourke, the last great liberal hope for Texas was Wendy Davis, four years ago. A former state senator, Ms. Davis ran for governor after attracting a national following for her filibuster in pink running shoes during a debate over abortion rights. She hoped to galvanize progressives while hedging plenty on gun policy to fit the changing electorate better than her ultraconservative opponent, Greg Abbott.
She lost by xx points. She believes she recognizes her mistakes now.
"One of those was talking far too much virtually everything that was incorrect with my opponent. One of those was trying to take a qualified position on gun regulation, gun rubber, considering it was perceived as such a hot-push upshot," Ms. Davis said. "You lot have your speechwriter, and you take your pollsters and your message builder. And somewhere in the midst of that yous lose yourself."
Ms. Davis'due south failure has been invoked ofttimes lately, by Republicans who see parallels in Mr. O'Rourke'southward rise and by Democrats who tell themselves that this time is different.
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"Part of it is disarming people it'southward O.K. to trust once more," said Mike Siegel, the Democratic nominee in a long-shot race to unseat Representative Michael McCaul from Austin. "Information technology'southward still David versus Goliath, but Goliath is vulnerable this year."
Democrats speak hopefully virtually how far the state has come, how the onetime and new can coexist — rural, urban, cowboys, hipsters, capitalists, livestock.
Oil fortunes have spiked and receded — from $30 a barrel, to $140, to points in betwixt — as technology jobs have flooded in. Hurricane tempest-waters have pooled high, swamping areas represented past people dubious of climate science, and taxes have stayed depression.
Four of the nation's eleven largest cities are at present in Texas. Houston, the biggest, is considered the nearly diverse major city in America. Its final two mayors are a black man and a lesbian. Its most famous politician in office is Mr. Cruz.
Then in that location are the politics of the border, amplified past Mr. Trump'southward immigration policy of family separations. Even earlier that, some residents had long chafed at Republicans' suggestions that they were overrun with crime. "They think nosotros're in a war zone," said Alonzo Cantu, a prominent developer and Democratic donor from McAllen. "I'm in my house correct at present, the keys are in my car. My front door is open."
Democrats acknowledge that any electoral road map for Mr. O'Rourke, through a maze of entrenched cherry-red, volition require voters in blueish splotches of South Texas to turn out in record numbers. Mr. O'Rourke must besides dominate in the large counties where Hillary Clinton shell Mr. Trump — Harris, Bexar, Travis, Dallas — outrunning her even in areas where she won by more than than 100,000 votes and convincing Democrats, particularly black and Hispanic voters, to show up at presidential-twelvemonth levels. The nigh difficult heave may be mobilizing new registrants, including new arrivals to the state who accept settled in suburban areas and residents in rural counties where Democrats accept oftentimes lost by more than 50 points.
Mr. O'Rourke likes to say he is visiting areas so red "you tin can meet them glowing from outer space." He sees his crowds — several hundred people, consistently, in places where a Democrat might more often than not await to draw tens — as evidence that the approach is working.
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Mr. Cruz sees it differently. "It's a 'Field of Dreams' strategy: 'If you build it, they will come,'" the senator said. "Maybe in Massachusetts."
He pointed out that Mr. Abbott, the Republican governor, remains a heavy favorite for re-election against Lupe Valdez, a sometime Dallas County sheriff.
But at the very least, Mr. O'Rourke'due south efforts have helped build, or rebuild, Autonomous infrastructure across the country, attracting volunteers and attention not just for his ain campaign merely for his peers. Some Republican-held House districts had already been targets, particularly after Mrs. Clinton carried a handful of them. These include 1 effectually Dallas, where Colin Allred, a erstwhile Obama administration official and professional football game player, is challenging Representative Pete Sessions, and another in Houston, where Lizzie Pannill Fletcher, a lawyer, is facing Representative John Culberson.
Local Democrats agreed that expectations had never been college, for better or worse. Mr. O'Rourke was introduced recently equally "senator-elect."
"He's already won," said Fine art Pronin, a 38-year-old activist. "Information technology won't ever be the aforementioned again."
Rafael and Robert go Ted and Beto
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The irony is not lost on either candidate.
Mr. Cruz, whose given proper noun is Rafael, is a Cuban immigrant's son who speaks middling Spanish and wants to build the wall.
His opponent, whose given proper noun is Robert, is a white human being from a edge city who speaks perfect Spanish with an accent impressive for an O'Rourke (and not bad for a Beto) and calls the family separation policy the moral stain of our times.
It tin exist difficult to imagine either human becoming exactly who they are as Rafael or Robert. Mr. Cruz has been more explicit in raising this point. In March, his campaign released a jingle-assail on Mr. O'Rourke that included the lyrics, "Liberal Robert wanted to fit in, so he inverse his name to Beto and hid it with a grin."
Mr. Cruz was asked about this, after maxim his guiding political principle has e'er been to focus on substance. "Expect," he said, "yous tin take a sense of humour."
And Mr. O'Rourke has had his ain . While his entrada has been less negative than Mr. Cruz's, he occasionally likes to have it both ways, flagging the senator's wandering political eye. "Visited every unmarried one of the 99 counties of Iowa," Mr. O'Rourke often says of Mr. Cruz, "instead of being here."
On the drive through E Texas, Mr. O'Rourke was asked if his opponent is sincere. He turned to his communications managing director in the back seat. "How do you lot want me to answer this?" Mr. O'Rourke asked, which was its own kind of answer. "Do you desire me to tell him the airport story?"
They decided no. He cursed theatrically, feigning torment at withholding this nugget in the name of high-mindedness.
The candidates dwell fiddling on their surface similarities, but there are a few. Both left Texas for the Ivy League; both have fans who would welcome their promotion to president. ("No," Mr. O'Rourke said in the motorcar, waving off the growing speculation that he could seek the White House fifty-fifty if he loses this race. "I don't desire to do that. No.")
Only where Mr. Cruz's old classmates and colleagues remember a human being who seemed to imagine himself in high office since his teens — Princeton debate champion, Harvard Law, Supreme Courtroom clerkship, the 2000 Bush campaign — Mr. O'Rourke'due south path has been unusual.
He moved from Columbia University, where he captained the crew team, to a loft in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. He played in a punk band. He found odd jobs: a publishing gig in the Bronx, another hauling fine art for a visitor called Hedley's Humpers. And occasionally, he got into trouble — spending a dark in county jail in his early 20s for attempted forcible entry (he says he jumped a contend at the University of Texas at El Paso) and getting arrested 3 years later for drunken driving.
Mr. O'Rourke said he steadied himself, in fourth dimension, upon his return to El Paso in the late 1990s. He started a technology company, joined the Metropolis Council in 2005 and took downwardly a Democratic incumbent in 2012 to get to Congress. Until recently, he had non more often than not been considered a budding superstar within the conclave.
Paradigm
Just dorsum dwelling, he developed a reputation for taking on all comers, making himself ubiquitous with regular elective forums and social media savvy. Now, as he and Mr. Cruz travel the land, the most instructive dissimilarity between them may come in the questions voters think to ask.
For Mr. Cruz: Why isn't Hillary Clinton in jail? When can we defund Planned Parenthood?
For Mr. O'Rourke: What can nosotros practise for intersex rights? What exercise you make of protests during the national anthem?
"I can think of zero more American than to peacefully stand up, or take a knee, for your rights," he told the questioner, in Houston. Predictably, the moment became the latest viral plough for a candidate who often live-streams every waking moment, from speeches to burger runs.
At least as predictably, Mr. Cruz seized on the remarks instantly.
"Wildly out of touch with Texas," he said.
This remains true, Mr. Cruz suggested, even in a new Texas. More than any political argument, he has taken issue with the assumption that minority voters will flock to Mr. O'Rourke. Mr. Cruz said he won about 40 percent of the Hispanic vote in 2012, when Mr. Romney earned 27 percent of information technology nationally. His supporters vacillate between assuasive that change will come up, just slowly, and insisting it is still the state they knew.
"I pray information technology is," said Mary Ann Chelf, 61, waiting for Mr. Cruz in Brenham. "But I don't really get around much."
"The demographics are going blue," said Bill Odom, lx, sitting a few anxiety away. "Probably adjacent 10 years. Not this year."
Prototype
Even the most dedicated Democrats doubtable he may be right. Seated in the Houston crowd for Mr. O'Rourke was Sissy Farenthold, at present 91, who ran twice for governor in the 1970s and was in one case the only woman in the Texas House of Representatives.
Pushing a walker afterward, she spoke of the xenophobia that persisted afterward the ballot of Barack Obama, which she had expected to augur an end to such nastiness. "I idea that was going to exist the alter, the transformation," Ms. Farenthold recalled.
But mayhap information technology could be Beto, she said. Maybe the fourth dimension was now.
Or possibly:
"Yous finally have," she said, stopping for a moment to permit younger guests pass, "that things will happen subsequently you're gone."
Jonathan Martin contributed reporting
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Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/31/us/politics/beto-orourke-dreams-of-one-texas-ted-cruz-sees-another-clearly.html
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