O’Rourke fundraising surge jolts Senate race vs. Cruz
The campaign for U.S. Senate in Texas moved into a higher gear this week, with Republican incumbent Ted Cruz speaking in a dozen cities in three days and rival U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke, D-El Paso, driving 1,500 miles across Texas over six days with the blockbuster news that his campaign fundraising was in overdrive, collecting more than $6.7 million this year.
O’Rourke’s haul came in more than 141,000 contributions. The average donation was $40 and more than 70 percent of donations have come from Texas, O’Rourke said.
The first-quarter report includes an earlier report on fundraising for the first 45 days
of the year, a span during which O’Rourke raised $2.3 million and Cruz raised just over $800,000.
The Cruz campaign has not yet issued its new numbers — they are due April 15 — but, through Feb. 14, O’Rourke had outraised Cruz since the beginning of last year — $8.7 million to $7.3 million — while Cruz had more cash on hand as of mid-February: $6 million to $4.9 million.
O’Rourke’s strong numbers, without reliance on any PAC money, fortified his credibility in the face of what remain daunting odds against a skilled and aggres- sive opponent in a state that hasn’t elected a Democrat to the Senate since Lloyd Bent- sen in 1988 and has never elected someone from El Paso to statewide office. The March 6 party primaries now past, Cruz, at a general election campaign kick- off event Monday night at the Red Neck Country Club in the Houston area, unveiled a campaign that at once exalts Texans’ toughness and common ground amid adversity — such as Hurricane Harvey — while also portraying O’Ro- urke as outside Texas norms on issues such as taxes, the border and guns.
Second Amendment
Cruz has especially been hitting the gun issue, not- ing retired Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens’ recent opinion article call- ing for repeal of the Second Amendment protecting people’s right to bear arms.
Many Democrats, Cruz said, agree with Stevens but are “just not as brave or truthful or candid enough to admit it.”
“Do you want to repeal the Second Amendment?” Texas Tribune CEO Evan Smith asked O’Rourke before a large crowd at McLennan Community College in Waco on Tuesday afternoon. “No, I don’t,” O’Rourke said. “Do you want to take our guns?” Smith asked.
“I don’t want to take anyone’s guns,” O’Rourke replied. But that is not likely to put matter to rest, as O’Rourke the continued about to talk with Smith guns, an issue that he noted is “so easily mischaracterized.”
“Texas has a unique opportunity in this versation gun about gun safety conand ownership in this country,” O’Rourke said. “We have the ability to help this country do something that, on its own, without the aid of Texas, she has been unable to do.”
“The 5½ years I’ve been in Congress,” O’Rourke said, “we have had precisely zero debates on gun safety, as tens and thousands of our fellow Americans are killed every year in gun violence.”
On the AR-15, an assault weapon that has been at the center of public debate, “that weapon has no room in our schools, our churches and our streets,” O’Rourke said to applause. “We can defend the Second Amendment, as we should, as I have and as I will continue to do, and be smart about gun violence.”
But the previous night, Cruz won loud applause from supporters at the Red Neck Social Club when he men
tioned how Stephen Wille- ford grabbed his AR-15 after he learned that a shooter was killing people a block from his home in Suther- land Springs last fall, in the deadliest church shooting in American history.
Cruz said that Willeford, who was at Monday’s rally, ran barefoot to the church, called out the shooter, and in a gunbattle wounded the shooter twice, sending him fleeing. Cruz said that when a stranger drove by in a pickup, Willeford told him a shooter was making his escape, and the stranger said, “Hop in; let’s go get ’em.”
“That’s Texas,” Cruz said. “That’s who we are, who this state is.”
Obamacare, immigration
In March 2016, the Redneck Social Club was the scene for Cruz’s election night celebration on Super Tuesday, when he won Texas and two other states, but Donald Trump carried the day and went on to secure the party’s nomination and the presidency.
Conservative talk radio host Michael Berry, who owns the club and introduced Cruz, described the senator as a singular political figure whose epic 2013 talkathon against Obamacare
the single most important speech and act on the single most important issue of the last 10 years.”
“William F. Buckley, the father of conservatism, said, ‘A conservative is someone who stands athwart history yelling, ‘Stop,’ when no one else is inclined to do so and no one else has patience for those who do,’” Berry said. “That’s what Ted Cruz did. He stood athwart history
and said, ‘Stop.’” But in Waco, O’Rourke, while trying to stay positive, when asked by Smith if there are things voters should be angry about, said, “We are the defining immigrant state,” but when it came time for the Senate to debate immigration reform, “there was one and one senator alone who voted no, not to even have that discussion, and that was our junior senator. I think you can be angry about that.”