Rolling Stone released a profile piece on former At The Drive-In bassist, Rep. Beto O’Rourke’s (D. TX) U.S. Senate campaign against incumbent U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R. TX). The whole thing is worth a read but here’s a section that really stood out for me:
Before he got the idea that he could win a Senate seat in Texas from a Republican incumbent with universal name recognition and a formidable fundraising operation, O'Rourke was a fairly low-profile member of the House. Few people knew of his crusade to combat gang violence by legalizing marijuana, or the years he spent playing bass with Cedric Bixler-Zavala (now a member of the Mars Volta and At the Drive-In) in their old punk band Foss. That started to change last summer, after Speaker Paul Ryan ordered C-Span cameras turned off during Democrats' 25-hour sit-in to protest inaction on gun control, and O'Rourke launched his own broadcast on Facebook Live (Ryan has since passed a measure that would fine live-streaming from the House floor). O'Rourke's profile spiked again earlier this year after a blizzard canceled flights into D.C. – he and a Republican colleague, Rep. Will Hurd, live-streamed a 1,600-mile rental-car drive (#CongressionalCannonballRun) from Texas to the nation's capital. Tens of thousands of people, including dozens of colleagues in the House and Senate, plus Mark Zuckerberg, tuned in for the 36-hour bipartisan "town hall," during which O'Rourke and Hurd grabbed doughnuts, talked health care and border security, and made a detour to Graceland.
Besides supporting limits on guns, O'Rourke, who is 44, is pro-choice and a vocal advocate for comprehensive immigration reform. If that sounds like a tough way to win a race in Texas – where political moderation is considered symptomatic of a disease known as "Californication" – O'Rourke has vowed to do it without accepting a cent of PAC money. He has reason to be confident: For one thing, he's never lost a race. He won his first bid for Congress campaigning in a district on the Mexican border, on a platform calling for the legalization of marijuana. His rival in the primary, an eight-term incumbent, had the full support of the Democratic establishment – Barack Obama endorsed him; Bill Clinton came to El Paso to stump – but O'Rourke, whose political career at the time consisted of two terms on the El Paso City Council, stole the seat nonetheless.
Still, it's been 23 years since a Democrat won a statewide race in Texas – the longest dry spell anywhere in the country – and nearly 30 years since one captured a Senate seat. The last candidate to do so was Lloyd Bentsen, re-elected to the Senate in 1988, the year he and Michael Dukakis lost a bid for the White House to George H.W. Bush. As recently as 1994, Democrats controlled the Texas state Legislature and the governor's mansion, and held almost twice as many congressional seats as Republicans. That changed in 2005, when a GOP-led redistricting campaign flipped the balance. Today, Republicans hold 25 of Texas' 36 congressional seats, and control nearly two-thirds of the state Legislature.
The recent dominance of Republicans tends to obscure the changing conditions on the ground. Donald Trump captured the Lone Star State with just 52 percent of the vote, down from the 57 percent Mitt Romney got four years earlier. In Texas' urban centers, where some 88 percent of the state's population now resides, the news is even worse for the GOP: Obama captured Houston's Harris County, for example, by just 971 votes in 2012; four years later, Hillary Clinton won with 160,000 votes to spare. "The day that Texas Democrats regain power will be the day when someone who everyone thinks is a big long shot says, 'To hell with it, I'm running,' " says Brent Budowsky, a former aide to Sen. Bentsen and a longtime observer of Texas politics. "The great Texas Democrats over the years didn't wait for invitations."
O'Rourke jumped into the race on March 31st – 585 days before Texans head to the polls. But at every stop this weekend, all in counties Trump won, spectators assemble like it's the final stretch of the campaign. At a brewery in Allen, cars were parked half a mile down the road in both directions; the overflow crowd was in the flowerbeds. Dick Hildenbrand, a local precinct chair for the Democratic Party, says it's the largest crowd he's ever seen at a Democratic event in Collin County. But the enthusiasm tracks with the general mood since Trump's election: "Just a total groundswell of people wanting to get involved."
Do give the whole article a read. Also, if you’re wondering where Beto stands on Medicare For All, his Facebook post back in July says it all:
And he even has a petition for Medicare For All on his campaign website. Click here to add your name.
And click here to donate and get involved with Beto’s campaign.