WaPo: “Everyone in this 3,087-person Panhandle city knows that Beto O’Rourke is coming to campaign for governor today. It’s a major event, a big-time politician coming all the way out here, deep into rural oil country, where the landscape is dotted with pump jacks and cattle and grain elevators, and the worst drought in 10 years has sucked up all the water in the Canadian River so it’s just a dry bed of red dirt.
“People are buzzing! It’s a big buzz,” says Suzanne Bellsnyder, who owns the one coffee shop downtown. Local gossip networks have already alerted her that Beto (he’s achieved one-name celebrity status in these parts, like Cher) is next door having lunch. It’s a Saturday afternoon, and he’ll be speaking in a park, with the temperature hitting 105 degrees.
People are buzzing in a good way? Like, excited?
…Maybe it’s a fool’s errand or just a kamikaze mission of hope, but Beto is holding more than 70 public events in 49 days trying to convince people in mostly small, rural and often incredibly red towns around the state that he should be their next governor. It’s part of a campaign strategy fueled by the fact that four years ago he came closer than any Democrat in a generation to winning a statewide office in his Senate race — within 220,000 votes, or 2.6 percent. Which in Texas counts as close.”