O’Rourke shouldn’t give a single nickel to national Democrats

A few months ago, national political observers abruptly turned their attention to Texas after belatedly noticing that there’s a

U.S. Senate race going on down here.

Texans, of course, already knew that.

U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke, the Democrat from El Paso seeking to unseat incumbent Republican Ted Cruz, was relatively unknown when he launched his campaign in March of last year.

Since then he’s made himself quite a pest, according to Republican leaders. But voters don’t seem to mind; Texans have been turning out en masse for O’Rourke’s town halls since day one, as well as festooning the landscape with black-and-white yard signs.

By August, polls showed a genuinely competitive contest between O’Rourke and Cruz. That spurred the Washington, D.C.-based pundits to take the race seriously and put O’Rourke in the spotlight. Many Democrats see him as someone who could be the party’s presidential nominee in 2020.

Since then the polls have widened, though, sending pundits back to the conventional wisdom that since Texas is a red state, Cruz will probably win the Senate race. Democrats from outside the state have consoled themselves with the thought that O’Rourke could nonetheless run for president, even if he loses the Senate race.

Then, last week, O’Rourke announced that he had raised $38 million in the third quarter of this year— the largest quarterly fundraising effort ever for a U.S. Senate race. That’s an eye-popping, astonishing figure.

And some Democratic leaders are a bit disgruntled, apparently, by O’Rourke’s refusal to share any money with other candidates running for Senate this year, via the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. That would potentially make a real difference in several races, and O’Rourke, after all, is an underdog. The

polls show that.

As a Texan, I would like to make it clear in no uncertain terms that O’Rourke is entirely right on this. He is under absolutely no obligation to give a single nickel to anybody. And if he gave even a single nickel to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, I would be outraged.

National Democratic leaders who were hoping to panhandle from him should be ashamed of themselves. So should the D.C. pundits whose muddle-headed analysis helped create this situation.

O’Rourke’s poll numbers took a hit after national political observers trained their spotlight on him. That spotlight also helped him raise a ridiculous amount of money during the third quarter because it gave Democratic voters across the country — not just in Texas — someone to pin their hopes on.

O’Rourke, obviously, is an appealing candidate. He has, by any standard, outperformed expectations for a Democrat running statewide in Texas. So it wouldn’t reflect poorly on O’Rourke if this year’s campaign ends in defeat. It would reflect poorly on the Texas electorate. And such a loss wouldn’t preclude O’Rourke from running for president in 2020, because Democrats can, in theory, retake the White House even if their nominee doesn’t win Texas.

The fact that Democratic voters are even thinking along these lines is really an indictment of national Democratic leadership. O’Rourke has flatly ruled out running for anything in 2020 if he loses this year. There’s actually no evidence that he has any desire to be president. He began his career in electoral politics with seven years on the El Paso City Council, which is not exactly an office that observers consider a stepping stone. Also, O’Rourke is a Democrat running statewide in Texas. It would be a bit unfair, I think, to accuse him of opportunism.

The only reason O’Rourke has an opportunity to win the Senate race is that his message is resonating with Texans — and his message, all along, has been that he wants to work for the people of Texas, regardless of whether they’re Democrats, Republicans, or independents.

National political observers have heard him say that. They’ve cited O’Rourke’s bipartisan ethos as one of the reasons he might make a good presidential candidate. And it’s possible, I guess, that O’Rourke has spent the past 20 months crisscrossing Texas as some kind of elaborate audition for national Democrats.

But Texans have been hearing a different message from O’Rourke. We’ve been hearing him say that he wants to work for the people of Texas — not the Democratic Party, or the D.C. pundits.