Former Rep. Beto O’Rourke, D-Texas, became a household name in 2018 for running against — and losing to — Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas. After that, he ran for president but dropped out before the first primary elections.
Now he’s running for governor.
He announced his campaign on Monday via a YouTube video, and he attacked the incumbent Gov. Greg Abbot, a Republican, for his leadership during the state’s winter storm.
“I’m running for governor, and I want to tell you why,” O’Rourke said in the video. “This past February, when the electricity grid failed and millions of our fellow Texans were without power — which meant that the lights wouldn’t turn on, the heat wouldn’t run, and pretty soon the pipes froze, and the water stopped running — they were abandoned by those who were elected to serve and look out for them.”
O’Rourke himself has fundraised for storm victims, arranged wellness checks for the elderly, and delivered clean water in the back of his pickup truck — according to The New York Times.
He went on to use the winter storm as an example of a leadership crisis. He mentioned the power grid three times in about two minutes.
“It’s a symptom of a much larger problem that we have in Texas right now. Those in positions of public trust have stopped listening to, serving, and paying attention to, and trusting to the people of Texas, and so they’re not focused on the things that we really want them to do, like making sure that we have a functioning electricity grid.”
O’Rourke chastised for Texan leaders for diverting attention away from “the things that most of us actually agree on, like expanding Medicaid and legalizing marijuana.”
He said, “Instead, they’re focusing on the kind of extremist policies around abortion or permitless carry — or even in our schools — that really only divide us and keep us apart and stop us from working together on the truly big things that we want to achieve for one another. It’s a really small vision for such a big state.”
The Times described O’Rourke’s campaign as as a “longshot.” Republicans have won every statewide election in Texas for the last 27 years.
Plus, O’Rourke has unseated incumbent Democrats but never an incumbent Republican. In 2018 he benefitted from a blue wave and still lost to Cruz.
Abbott has already released campaign ads of O’Rourke endorsing unpopular policies. In 2019, O’Rourke said in a debate, “Hell yes! We’re going to take your AR-15, your AK-47.”
Later that year, O’Rourke’s presidential campaign was selling T-shirts with those words on them. Now, his gubernatorial campaign is already being haunted by them.
O’Rourke has moderated some of his positions since the 2018 Senate race. For example, he walked back his call for eliminating private insurance.
He’s currently losing to Abbott in most polls… but not all of them.
Watch the video here —
The Horn editorial team