“In any case of Texas freezes over due to poor management, I believe it’s a distinct state of Texas than it was two weeks in the past,” mentioned
“In any case of Texas freezes over due to poor management, I believe it’s a distinct state of Texas than it was two weeks in the past,” mentioned Mikal Watts, a San Antonio-based lawyer and main Democratic cash bundler.
If O’Rourke runs for governor, Watts mentioned, “I believe he might catch fireplace.”
O’Rourke’s political prospects — like these of each Texas Democrat — appeared to considerably dim following the November elections, with Republican victories within the state grounding Democrats’ once-sky-high expectations there and seeming to verify the GOP’s continued dominance. Donald Trump carried the state by greater than 5 share factors, and Republican Sen. John Cornyn received reelection by practically 10 factors.
But O’Rourke is interesting to Democratic donors and occasion officers in Texas due to his reputation among the many rank-and-file and expansive political community within the state, which he has solely broadened since abandoning his presidential marketing campaign in November 2019. One Democrat described him as “the Democratic Get together in Texas.”
In the course of the common election final yr, O’Rourke’s group mentioned it registered some 200,000 individuals to vote. And Powered by Folks, which incorporates two longtime advisers from O’Rourke’s political campaigns, was starting a program to signal individuals up for coronavirus vaccines when the storm hit, prompting it to shift its focus to the aid effort. O’Rourke, by means of his group, has raised greater than $1.four million for the restoration, scrambled a legion of volunteers to knock on doorways and, through telephone banks, made greater than 900,000 wellness checks on seniors.
“He has mainly accomplished the work of Stacey Abrams in Texas, in the event you take a look at this report of elevating cash and volunteers,” mentioned Eliot Shapleigh, a former Texas state senator and longtime pal of O’Rourke, referring to the previous Georgia gubernatorial candidate whose organizing helped elect two Democrats to the Senate in her state in January. “Evaluate him to Republican leaders. It’s the proper distinction. Let’s take Ted Cruz. Ted Cruz jets off to Cancun, lies about it, comes again and makes a present of handing out water. In the meantime, Beto’s raised a couple of million {dollars}, has obtained hundreds of individuals to make calls … Voters reply to that.”
Regardless of saying earlier than dropping out of the presidential race that he couldn’t “fathom a state of affairs the place I might run for public workplace once more if I’m not the nominee,” O’Rourke had been contemplating working for governor, annoyed, amongst different issues, by GOP Gov. Greg Abbott’s administration of the coronavirus pandemic and his name for Texas to grow to be a “Second Modification sanctuary state.”
“Whether or not or not I run,” he wrote, “I’ll do the whole lot in my energy to elect a Governor who seems out for everybody, retains Texans protected, solutions to the individuals as a substitute of the particular pursuits & ensures that all of us have equal alternative to realize our greatest in life.”
The long-term political penalties of the storm are unsure. However brief time period, it has been brutal on Texas Republicans, together with Abbott, who, along with sitting as governor throughout large energy outages, was panned for echoing a deceptive declare that renewable power was accountable for the disaster. A College of Houston ballot fielded in mid-January put Abbott’s approval ranking at simply 39 %. And that was earlier than hundreds of thousands of Texans misplaced energy — freezing of their houses and, if that they had working water, laboring underneath orders to boil it.
Nonetheless, that very same ballot put Abbott’s public approval ranking four share factors greater than O’Rourke’s. And even some Democrats concern that O’Rourke’s strident place on gun management through the presidential marketing campaign might hamstring him in a common election in Texas, a culturally conservative state with a historic attachment to firearms. Supportive of a compulsory buyback for assault weapons, the previous congressman had mentioned throughout a presidential debate, “Hell sure, we’re going to take your AR-15, your AK-47.”
Colin Strother, a veteran Democratic strategist within the state, mentioned, “Had he not run for president, with out the ‘We’re going to return to your own home and take your weapons’ line, I might have a very completely different opinion” on O’Rourke’s statewide viability. Watts known as it an “unforced error,” however one which O’Rourke might overcome “if he retains making good choices, like the best way he reacted to the freeze over the previous week.”
James Henson, director of the Texas Politics Undertaking on the College of Texas at Austin, which had Abbott polling within the higher 40s as of late final yr, mentioned that if O’Rourke does run for governor, “you continue to must favor the Republicans” in Texas.
Nevertheless, he mentioned: “You’ll be able to hear the arguments already. The argument goes to be made that Abbott has now underperformed in two main crises within the state — the pandemic after which the massive freeze and the ability outage.”
Republican strategist Dave Carney, who advises Abbott, mentioned Tuesday that he hopes O’Rourke runs for governor, regardless that he doesn’t suppose he’ll, noting that Republicans efficiently yoked down-ballot Democrats to O’Rourke and “it simply labored like a appeal.”
“He should still get adoring followers who fawn over him across the nation,” he mentioned, however “voters in Texas haven’t been enamored.”
Nonetheless, whereas usually important of O’Rourke — “Beto’s like a moth to a flame. If there’s a TV digital camera there, he might be there” — Carney mentioned that “throughout a disaster, anyone serving to out is an effective factor.”
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) has raised a number of million {dollars} for the catastrophe aid, as O’Rourke has famous throughout his frequent livestreamed appreciations of different individuals serving to.
For his half, O’Rourke on Saturday drove 9 hours from his dwelling in El Paso, which was spared the worst of the storm’s results, to Austin, and by Tuesday was within the Rio Grande Valley, bringing water to individuals and checking on them at their doorways. He known as the drive to Austin the “El Paso to Austin straight-shot telethon,” as an adviser up to date viewers on the place they had been and the way a lot cash had been raised.
The episode wasn’t explicitly political — O’Rourke was joined at one cease by a person sporting a crimson Trump hat — but it surely was inescapable how reminiscent the livestreamed highway journey was of how O’Rourke had run his final two campaigns. When his adviser Cynthia Cano requested him the way it felt to be again on the highway, O’Rourke gave the impression to be in his ingredient.
“I really feel good,” he mentioned. “Truthfully, my proper butt hurts from driving for the final eight hours. However total, I really feel good.”