Finishing his third campaign in six years — Senate, then president, now Texas governor — Beto O’Rourke is the emblem of unrealized ambition in the Democratic Party
November 7, 2022 at 6:00 a.m. EST Beto O’Rourke campaigns in San Benito, Tex., on Nov. 1. “We’re gonna win. We have to win. There is no alternative,” he often tells supporters. (Sergio Flores for The Washington Post) Comment on this story Comment This is the last thing they hear from Beto O’Rourke. It’s not the speech he gives, atop a 16-inch plywood box in the parking lot of a polling place, the one about the failures of the current governor. It’s not the anger that cracks through the small crowd: his anger at the power grid that broke down last winter and “this f—er,” his opponent, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, who “can’t keep the lights on”; his anger at the school shooting in Uvalde and the “23 f—ing weeks” that have passed without new gun laws; his anger at voting restrictions, abortion bans, insufficient health care. It’s what happens after the speech is done, when the candidate for governor steps down from the box, and a neat line forms in the parking lot. Two staffers stand in position, ready to take pictures. And it is here, as he meets and then parts with each one of his supporters, that O’Rourke says, “We’re gonna win. We have to win.” “We gotta do this. There’s no alternative.” “Please post that photo.” “It’s really important that you share the photo today on all your networks.” “Post that, OK? Tell people you voted.” “We gotta come through. We’re going to come through.” One after another, O’Rourke’s supporters heard this final invocation. It was a promise — a vow of reassurance to the people who gave their hearts to the Beto campaign four years ago in his race against Sen. Ted Cruz (R), when he came as close as any Democrat in more than 20 years to building a winning coalition in Texas, only to fall short by 2.6 percentage points. It is also a call of defiance — a refusal to believe polls and demographic trends that suggest an even more painful defeat ahead. But more than that, O’Rourke’s mantra was one he seemed to say as much to himself as to the people around him: We’re gonna win. We have to win. There is no alternative. With a little over a week to go until Election Day, incumbent Governor Greg Abbott, and Democratic challenger Beto O’Rourke are making final pitches to voters. (Video: Rich Matthews/The Washington Post) Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke has spent 1,175 of the last 2,048 days of his life running for office. Three races in six years: U.S. Senate, then president, now governor. O’Rourke is young, just 50 years old. He has become the emblem of unrealized ambition in the Democratic Party, a candidate who has kept going and going and may keep going still, even if he falls short on Tuesday. Polls say Abbott, the eight-year Republican incumbent, a conservative stalwart and a possible presidential contender, has widened his lead in the final stretch of the race. Early-vote numbers in Texas are down compared to 2018, when O’Rourke capitalized on opposition to Donald Trump’s presidency. O’Rourke is well known throughout Texas, but he has attached himself to progressive ideas that many Texans never liked. “Hell yes, we’re going to take your AR-15, your AK-47,” he said during his presidential bid, promoting mandatory gun buybacks. Across the country, Democrats are worried about energizing voters, even in deep-blue states like New York. Control of the House seems all but gone for Democrats, and the Senate majority hangs by a seat here, or a seat there, in Pennsylvania or Georgia or Arizona or Nevada. And then there is O’Rourke, here in Texas, still going, still trying. “We gotta do everything we can, right?” “We all need some hope right now. We gotta make sure the hope is fulfilled.” And so O’Rourke began the week before the election in his dark gray Toyota Tundra, kicking up gravel on Interstate 2 in the Lower Rio Grande Valley, a collection of counties at the tip of Texas that touch the U.S.-Mexico border, telling voters not to give up on an actual victory. He hit eight polling locations in less than 30 hours. “People do not want to have their hearts broken again,” he told them. “Believe me that this is possible, because it is possible,” he told them. What else can he say? There is no alternative. O’Rourke is looking for something that he may not find. There is a mythical quality to what he seeks: the unseen, yet-to-be reached voter who, if only he could “bring them in,” would expand a coalition that allows him to win. Maybe in another kind of election year, maybe in another kind of state, it would feel more in reach. But that’s why O’Rourke is in the valley. His path to victory against Abbott depends on high turnout in the big cities of Texas. But in his mind, it also lies here, through a sometimes neglected portion of the electorate. O’Rourke is trying to reach people who have never voted before, who just turned 18, who just naturalized into the voting process — “people who’ve been drawn out of our elections,” he says. “They’re not in anybody’s polling or turnout universe.” This is why he’s asking people to take a picture with him and post it on Instagram or Facebook or Twitter or the new social media site BeReal. (“Are you on BeReal?” he asks Democratic Rep. Joaquin Castro at one stop in Cameron County. O’Rourke certainly is.) If just one person’s post can encourage another to vote — a la an online influencer — then maybe he can achieve a multiplying effect. “This will break through to your friends in the way that I could never,” he tells one woman in Edinburg. Behind the ropeline, his longtime aide Chris Evans stands in the crowd with two phones. On one, he broadcasts the scene live on O’Rourke’s Instagram. On the other, he checks the feed in real-time. At a stop in Harlingen, 299 people are watching. Other people in the crowd are also streaming: Six people watching on one person’s Instagram, five on another, two on another. In total, 312. When each stop is done, O’Rourke jumps behind the wheel of his truck, drives to the next parking lot and does it again. We’re gonna win. We have to win. “A refrain that makes a ton of sense to me is ‘action is the antidote to despair.’ And it is the key to victory,” O’Rourke says, stopping to talk between visits. “And I have to remind myself of that. We all have to. And not just in elections — in just life. Gettin’ up in the morning and facing the challenges you have. Gotta take action, gotta be in motion, gotta be with people. That all feels good to me.” O’Rourke is in Edinburg, population 104,871. Then Weslaco, population 41,058. Then San Juan, population 35,582. It’s Monday, Oct. 31, Halloween — eight days until Election Day, though millions are already voting. A supporter in San Juan asks what O’Rourke is seeing in the early-vote returns. “It started a little slow,” he replies. By the following day, there should be more data. “But that’s why we’re here: We want to push and push and push.” Ten miles up the road, just after 6 p.m., O’Rourke makes his last stop of the day near a polling site in McAllen, one of the largest cities in the Rio Grande Valley. By now, the sky is purple, and a light rain has darkened the parking lot asphalt. Amy O’Rourke, the candidate’s wife, joins the edge of the crowd after a long day of canvassing. She has been by O’Rourke’s side through these six years of campaigns. He hasn’t won a race since 2016, when he was elected to his third term in Congress, limiting himself to serving just six years and seeking a promotion to the Senate. Since then, the rhythms of running for office, though not governing, have become a permanent feature of the O’Rourke family life. What happens on Wednesday morning, Nov. 9, when the O’Rourkes wake up and the race is over? “There will be elements of a campaign that will probably continue,” Amy says. “But we’re also super excited to just be together.” As her husband poses for pictures, Amy says the first two years of the pandemic, which began soon after O’Rourke dropped out of the presidential race before making it to the Iowa caucuses, was the “most concentrated time we’d ever spent together as a family.” The couple has three kids: Ulysses, 15; Molly, 14; and Henry, 12. At the height of covid isolation, they went on hikes together around their hometown of El Paso. They got a puppy. They built a chicken coop at their house. The chickens roam around in the backyard. “And it was so great!” Finally, the kids had their dad to themselves — they don’t like the “hoopla,” she says. “They just want to be normal kids.” And then O’Rourke jumped into another race. What’s different about this one is the kids are old enough to understand the stakes. Molly never showed much interest in politics, Amy says, but after the shooting in Uvalde, where 19 students and two teachers died at Robb Elementary School in May, she texted her dad, “We’ve gotta win.” A few months later, Ulysses turned to his mom and asked, “If we lose this, what is my future?” Across the parking lot in McAllen, a group of Abbott supporters form a line facing the Beto crowd. “What glory is there in being a professional loser?” one man shouts. “Former congressman — that’ll be his title,” says another. “Beto,” the first man yells. “WHY ARE YOU STILL HERE?” Back in the photo line, O’Rourke keeps taking pictures. “We’re gonna do it.” The next morning, the early-vote numbers are in. They don’t look good. O’Rourke doesn’t mention it. The campaign has just out-raised Abbott for the third consecutive reporting period, and he wants to talk about that instead. In San Benito, at the candidate’s first stop of…
