The latest coverage of O'Rourke's effort to cultivate the rural vote in his run for Governor of Texas is by Jada Yuan in the Washington Post,"Beto O'Rourke's risky quest for votes in deep-red Texas." Here are some excerpts, with a focus on issues barely touched on--or ignored altogether--in prior coverage:
Could a victory for Beto lie not in liberal cities such as Austin or Houston but in spending these last precious three months of the campaign driving his Toyota Tundra to the least populous, most Republican parts of the state, mining for untapped votes?
“I mean, there’s a reason to do this,” Beto says in Spearman, sweating through his white button-down. Having been married for 17 years, Beto often says, he knows no two people agree on everything, but he’s hoping people around here might at least like his plans to repair Texas’s power grid or to pay teachers more.
If nothing else, maybe they’ll respect that he came.
“I understand that if we’re only interested in those who are already with us, we’ll never get there,” he says, “We’ll end up in the same place every Democrat has for the last 28 years.” That’s how long it’s been since Texas had a Democrat as governor, when Ann Richards held the job.
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In these rural areas, Beto is essentially drilling for oil. “There are a lot of votes out there,” Beto says. “There are 7 million people who didn’t cast a ballot who were eligible in 2020.” There are the first-time voters and the Democrats who need an extra push to vote in the midterms and the people who don’t stick to party lines. “I would say they are persuadable,” he says.
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And then there are the votes no political scientist could tell him how to find. In Dumas, a Panhandle city that’s 55 percent Hispanic, truck driver Pablo Campos tells Beto he woke up at 3:30 a.m. so he could complete half his work shift and have enough time to go to the town hall gathering during his break. There, Mary Jane Garcia, 47, a devout Catholic, stood up to talk about the “spontaneous abortion” that saved her life when she miscarried at 17, and how scared she is that her daughters might be denied that medical care.
Over in Quanah, a city of 2,272, Darby Sparkman, 23, was astounded to see 64 people at Beto’s town hall meeting, since she’s an election worker and “like 10 people vote Democrat.” Edith Aguirre, 26, was among the nearly 200 people who showed up in Bowie, a growing city of 5,534 in verdant North Texas, where the radio stations veer from country to worship to worship country. She was brought here as a child from Mexico so her father could work in the oil fields. She’s not a citizen and can’t vote but brought her sister, Ashley, who turns 18 this year. They wept while talking about how Ashley will be the first voter in her family.
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If deeply conservative places like Spearman are his path to victory, though, it’s going to be a bumpy road.
Beto is holding his town hall gathering in a park. According to Beto’s press director, Chris Evans, the owner of the restaurant they originally booked called and explained that his staff might have signed off, but he was not okay with it.
By the time Beto arrives, people in MAGA and NRA hats, carrying “Pro-life” and “Build the Wall” signs or wearing “Team Jesus” T-shirts make up three-quarters of the 70-person crowd. Beto’s staff has invited them to join the town hall meeting in the shade.
As a related matter, don't miss Jon Mark Hogg's column in the San Angelo newspaper today, where he writes under the headline, "What we have lost in Texas politics":
Whether you like or vote for Beto O’Rourke or not, his campaign has sparked a political memory among the people of Texas. He reminds us of a time when candidates for Governor barnstormed into every nook and cranny of our state, spoke with and listened to anyone who wanted to talk about what they as persons were facing. There was a time that was expected of every candidate. That is something we have lost.
These are some of the issues, e.g., margins among rural voters, the way candidates used to show up, that I touched on in my recent Politico piece analyzing John Fetterman's quest for Pennsylvania's rural vote.
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