{"id":102836,"date":"2022-10-06T00:24:27","date_gmt":"2022-10-06T00:24:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/?p=102836"},"modified":"2022-10-06T00:24:30","modified_gmt":"2022-10-06T00:24:30","slug":"beto-orourke-is-making-his-last-stand-in-texas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/?p=102836","title":{"rendered":"“Beto O\u2019Rourke Is Making His Last Stand in Texas”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Politico<\/a>: “Nearly everything O\u2019Rourke\u00a0is doing \u2014 the non-stop tours, the crowds, the\u00a0viral indignation<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 is reminiscent of his previous runs (though, to the relief of many Democrats, he\u00a0appeared to take a more aggressive posture<\/a>\u00a0against Abbott than he initially did Cruz). The former congressman from El Paso also finds himself, once again, compelled to persuade voters that he still can win.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s not an unimportant case to make \u2014 significant to donors, volunteers and for keeping prospective voters enthused. And some people have already given up on him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou only have a certain amount of time to be the \u2018It\u2019 guy or \u2018It\u2019 girl or whatever it is, and then people start chipping away,\u201d one major Democratic donor in the state told me. \u201cNow he\u2019s coming back for Round 3, and it\u2019s like, can you really get that excited?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He said, \u201cDemocrats are excited to get rid of Abbott, but the fact is there are more Republicans in the state still.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

O\u2019Rourke, asked about the state of the race during an on-stage interview at the Texas Tribune Festival in Austin in late September, offered the banal refrain of trailing candidates everywhere: \u201cAs anyone who\u2019s asked this question whose polling is not where they want it to be would say, \u2018The only poll that matters is the one that we take on Election Day.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But he also had a more incisive argument about his prospects and public opinion polls. Respectable surveys four years ago put O\u2019Rourke behind Cruz<\/a> by a much wider margin<\/a> than he ultimately lost by, less than 3 percentage points.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He told reporters in Austin that voters are \u201cjust beginning to pay attention to this race,\u201d and that while Abbott has been pummeling him on TV, he has only recently started to advertise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s still early,\u201d said Marc Veasey, a Democratic congressman from Texas. \u201cI think he\u2019s got it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Julie Oliver, who twice ran unsuccessfully to flip a Republican-held House seat around Austin, said, \u201cI think there\u2019s never been a more opportune moment than now \u2026 I do, with my whole heart, believe he can win.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This may be O\u2019Rourke\u2019s last chance. With his near-universal name recognition and an army of small donors, O\u2019Rourke had widely been viewed in Texas as the Democrats\u2019 best hope of defeating Abbott, and he had been\u00a0lobbied heavily by Texas Democrats to get into the race<\/a>. But given the conservative bent of the state, it was always going to be a longshot.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Politico: “Nearly everything O\u2019Rourke\u00a0is doing \u2014 the non-stop tours, the crowds, the\u00a0viral indignation\u00a0\u2014 is reminiscent of his previous runs (though, to the relief of many Democrats, he\u00a0appeared to take a more aggressive posture\u00a0against Abbott than he initially did Cruz). The former congressman from El Paso also finds himself, once again, compelled to persuade voters that…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-102836","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-newsstory"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102836","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=102836"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102836\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":102837,"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102836\/revisions\/102837"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=102836"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=102836"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=102836"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}