San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Bid by O’Rourke would energize both parties
During his star-making 2018 run for the U.S. Senate, Beto O’Rourke insisted that if he lost the election to Republican incumbent Ted Cruz, he would never again run for political office.
Four months after losing to Cruz — but coming closer to victory than any statewide Texas Democrat had in two decades — O’Rourke launched his candidacy for president of the United States.
In October 2019, as
O’Rourke’s disappointing presidential campaign teetered on the edge of extinction, the former congressman from El Paso once again made it clear that anything short of victory meant the end of his days as a political candidate.
“I cannot fathom a scenario where I would run for public office again if I’m not the (presidential) nominee,” O’Rourke told Politico.
Don’t look now, but O’Rourke appears to be fathoming just such a scenario.
This past week, he told Buzz Adams, morning radio host for El Paso’s KLAQ, that he’s considering a run for governor in 2022.
“It’s something I’m going to think about,” O’Rourke said. “This state has suffered perhaps more than any other in the midst of this (COVID-19) pandemic.”
That expression of interest sparked a Thursday messaging war between O’Rourke and Gov. Greg Abbott, with Abbott reminding the voters of this gunloving state that O’Rourke, during his presidential bid, advocated a mandatory, nationwide buyback program for assault
weapons.
In one sense, the timing for an O’Rourke gubernatorial bid is ideal.
During his first five years in office, Abbott was the Teflon governor.
Although he didn’t hesitate to insert himself into divisive culture war firefights — celebrating Chick-fil-A when San Antonio dropped the fast-food chain from an airport concessions contract, then pointedly turning on the company when it stopped donating to anti-LGBTQ organizations — Abbott somehow managed to preserve the veneer of a statesman.
In 2018, while fellow highprofile Texas Republicans — such as Cruz and Attorney General Ken Paxton — encountered serious electoral scares, Abbott won re-election by nearly 14 percentage points.
The governor’s aura of invincibility, however, has taken some hits over the past year.
His wishy-washy management of the pandemic simultaneously
angered both ends of the political spectrum. Democrats complained he didn’t do enough to mandate social distancing, while many Republicans fumed over what they saw as Abbott’s tyrannical, business-crushing regulations.
Between April and October of last year, Abbott’s approval rating dropped from 56 percent to 47 percent, according to polling from the University of Texas/ Texas Tribune.
During that time, Abbott’s approval/disapproval differential went from a sunny +24 to a cloudier +7.
O’Rourke would bring plenty of rock star pizzazz to the 2022 gubernatorial race. He’d also be a fundraising force (a crucial issue when your incumbent opponent has a campaign war chest of more than $40 million).
At the same time, taking on Abbott would be a tougher task than what O’Rourke faced in his 2018 contest with Cruz.
The GOP’s liberty brigade might be nursing hard feelings
about Abbott, but nothing would bring them back to the governor’s side like a challenge from O’Rourke.
There’s also the fact that Beto-mania was a special confluence of time, circumstance and the freshness of O’Rourke’s idealistic, optimistic, livestreamed 2017-18 odyssey across the 254 counties of this state.
Sequels rarely catch you by surprise or delight you in quite the same way that their first iterations did.
It’s also undeniable that O’Rourke’s wobbly presidential campaign took some luster off his brand.
The gun issue, in particular, will make him a more polarizing figure than he was when he tried to beat Cruz by transcending the partisan divide.
The more combative, newmodel O’Rourke, however, could be a turnout magnet for Democrats who thought he tended to be too polite to Cruz during their Senate contest.
On Thursday, after Abbott
said O’Rourke’s stances on guns, immigration and energy won’t “sell real well” with Texas voters, O’Rourke fired back with an eight-tweet thread that prosecuted the case against Abbott’s COVID-19 management.
“(You) have undermined public health and local leadership at every turn, and now too many of our family, friends and neighbors are dead because of it,” O’Rourke said to Abbott.
O’Rourke’s presence in the race would drive up turnout for both parties. His coattails would help down-ballot Democrats and infuse considerable energy into the party’s erratic crusade to create a political realignment in Texas. But that doesn’t necessarily translate into a victory over Abbott.
It’s easy to see how an O’Rourke candidacy would be beneficial to his party. It’s not as clear, however, whether it would be beneficial to him.