O’Rourke to take stage with urgency
This could be it for Betomania. After three years of near-nonstop campaigning that has vaulted Beto O’Rourke from a littleknown El Paso congressman to one of the most in-demand Democratic politicians in the country, Tuesday could be his last chance on the national debate stage in his uphill battle for the White House.
While O’Rourke is certain to join 11 other candidates on stage in Ohio on Tuesday night on CNN, he has yet to hit the threshold to qualify for the November debate in Atlanta. Candidates will be required to register support from at least 3 percent of voters in four national polls recognized by the Democratic National Committee.
O’Rourke has just one qualifying poll.
That has created a new urgency for his campaign that has him taking more aggressively liberal positions on several issues and warning his supporters he may not make the next cut.
“We just need a little boost here to execute on our plan, make some progress in getting our
name out there, and qualify for November’s debate,” O’Rourke said in a fundraising pitch on Sunday night.
Another warning went out Monday: “The November debate will be the most important one yet,” the email said. “Why? Because millions of Americans who have not yet tuned in to this election will finally begin tuning in this fall.”
O’Rourke’s camp insists it is not feeling any new pressure but acknowledged that Tuesday in Ohio is one of two big opportunities this week for O’Rourke to bust out. The last debate in Houston drew more than 14 million viewers — the second-highest audience yet.
On Thursday, O’Rourke is hoping to get more national attention when he holds a counter rally as President Donald Trump comes to Texas. While Trump rallies at the American Airlines Center in Dallas, O’Rourke will be 14 miles away in Grand Prairie offering a rebuttal of sorts.
Not being on the stage isn’t necessarily a death knell for O’Rourke. But it keeps him from being on the same platform as frontrunners such as former vice president Joe Biden, U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren and U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders heading into the winter as the Iowa caucuses loom on Feb. 3.
Former San Antonio mayor Julián Castro is in a similar position and was more blunt about what failing to make the debate stage means.
“If I don’t make the next debate stage, it will be the end of my campaign,” Castro said in an email to supporters.
Castro does not have any qualifying polls showing him with 3 percent.
Other candidates who failed to make previous poll thresholds have already packed it in. U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, Washington state Gov. Jay Inslee, and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio all dropped out of the race.
Waiting for a shake-up
University of Virginia political science professor Larry Sabato said the mission is clear for the 20 or so candidates not named Biden, Sanders or Warren: They are just hanging on until something happens to shake up the race, such as Sanders’ heart surgery two weeks ago.
“In their minds, they see Biden collapsing, Sanders’ health issues forcing him out and Warren being seen as more unelectable, and they will be the one plucked out of obscurity,” Sabato said.
For O’Rourke, hitting 3 percent regularly in polls wasn’t uncommon early in the campaign when he was just coming off a U.S. Senate race in which he came within 3 percentage points of beating U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz — the closest a Democrat has come to winning statewide in Texas since the 1990s.
When he jumped into the Democratic primary race in March, a Quinnipiac University poll had O’Rourke with 12 percent of the vote, good for third place in the crowded field. But in a new Quinnipiac national poll released Monday, O’Rourke was at just 2 percent, tying him for sixth place. Castro has been at 1 percent or less in most public polling.
Facing the prospect of being left behind, O’Rourke has rolled out headline-grabbing policy positions that have provoked attacks from Republicans and even pushback from fellow Democrats.
During the September debate in Houston, O’Rourke toughened his position on gun control, calling for a mandatory federal buyback program for assault-style rifles after the mass shootings in El Paso and Midland-Odessa.
“Hell yes, we are going to take your AR-15, your AK-47,” said O’Rourke, who had initially pitched a voluntary buyback program. “We are not going to allow it to be used against fellow Americans anymore.”
Other candidates have criticized that position, including South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who warned that O’Rourke was playing into the hands of Republicans who want to paint all Democrats as liberals bent on taking guns from lawful owners.
Last week, O’Rourke again stirred things up by saying churches and religious schools should have their taxexempt status revoked if they don’t recognize same-sex marriages.
O’Rourke said there can be “no reward, no benefit, no tax break for anyone or any institution or organization in America that denies the full human rights, and the full civil rights, of everyone in America.”
While O’Rourke was applauded at a CNN town hall for the stance, more centrist candidates such as Buttigieg have warned that such a policy risks alienating legions of Democratic voters.
“I agree that anti-discrimination law ought to be applied to all institutions. But the idea that you’re going to strip churches of their tax-exempt status if they haven’t found their way towards blessing same-sex marriage — I’m not sure he understood the implications of what he was saying,” Buttigieg said on CNN’s “State of The Union” on Sunday.
Ways to rebound
Also last week, O’Rourke proposed creating a new entitlement savings program through the U.S. Postal Service to give non-homeowners up to $1,000 in matching money via the federal government if they save $2,000 toward buying a house.
Republicans have jumped on O’Rourke’s policy ideas. Conservative political activist Ben Shapiro said O’Rourke is proposing nothing short of a “culture war” with his proposal to remove the tax-exempt status of some churches.
Texas Democratic strategist Colin Strother said there could be ways for either O’Rourke or Castro to rebound even if they fail to make the debate stage in November.
He said the Democratic National Committee rules have created an odd pressure that has candidates spending so much time getting into debates that he’s not sure they are doing the basic doorknocking and voter outreach in Iowa and New Hampshire — the two states that will play a big role in shaping the field.
Traditionally, candidates who don’t finish in the top four in those two early voting states drop out of the race. But Castro and O’Rourke would have a chance to focus on those early states and try to connect with voters, Strother said.
“I don’t think it will be the end of the world for them,” he said.