How did someone like Beto O'Rourke succeed in a state like Texas? (Booker: 2015, neighborhood)

[redguard57]

I can speak to this. I was involved in county level Democratic politics in Texas in the 2000s, early 2010s, so I know how they thought. I'm about 10 year younger than Beto himself.

When the Democrats lost their hold on Texas in the early-mid 1990s, they dealt with it extremely poorly and were in denial for a VERY long time.

For the next 25 years, they continued to look to the old-timey success of people like Bob Bullock and Ann Richards as their template. Despite mounting statewide losses in the 1990s, Democrats clung to their successes of prior decades. They were stuck in the 70s and 80s. A good example of that is the 2002 election cycle in which Texas Democrats put up what they thought was a "dream team" of Tony Sanchez for governor and Ron Kirk as senator. Basically they were products of the Democratic party machine & they thought that having essentially conservative Democratic men, but ones who were hispanic/black, would make a difference. They ended up getting obliterated by Rick Perry and John Cornyn respectively, setting the stage for the next 15 years of wandering the wilderness.

In the ensuing decade and a half, Texas Democrats did the same thing over and over - put up candidates who were products of the border region or inner city machines, or people with experience in the 80s who were aging. They had no personality and no interesting positions on the issues. As those types of candidates (e.g.: Rick Noriega, Paul Sadler, Bill White) continued to lose, fundraising and infrastructure dried up, and Democrats ran on autopilot. The machine was capable of getting around ~3 to 3.5 million votes in presidential years, around 38-42% without much maintenance. They kept power in the border and the big cities without really trying.

The Republicans very shrewdly gerrymandered both the federal and state legislative seats to make sure that ~40% did not result in 40% of the seats in the US House delegation or State house & senate. More like 30%, and thus cemented their power. The old Democratic hands didn't seem to care. I was an Obama delegate to my county convention in 2008, and these curd-chewing 65 year old Democrats were convinced he would never win, kept comparing him to McGovern or Dukakis. They had very little respect for my generation, thought we were naive and silly. They kept saying we needed to win back placed like the east Texas rural counties. I pointed out that the HS graduates of the late 90s and 2000s were not staying there, but going to colleges like Sam Houston State and Stephen F. Austin State, then moving to places like Houston and its environs where actual jobs were! The only people left in those rural counties were the grandparents who were getting more conservative, not less. They didn't seem to get that.

All good things must come to an end. Population in a dynamically growing state starts to flood over gerrymandering walls, and those old Democratic hands from the 80s finally started to retire in the 2010s.

Beto O'Rourke was from a completely different generation with a different approach - he had run a 2012 primary campaign in El Paso actually quite like Ted Cruz's 2012 primary campaign against David Dewhurst. The former El Paso US Rep - Silvestre Reyes - was a loyal member of the Democratic machine and establishment. Beto ran an populist, anti-establishment campaign and ended up winning by a close vote. That he was not part of the state Democratic establishment is something people take for granted in his relative success in 2018. He broke nearly all the rules that my fellow convention attendees back in 2008 would have said were necessary.

He took pretty much the same approach to the U.S. Senate race in 2018. He was young and dynamic. In other states, a white male Democrat who's reasonably charismatic and had an actual shot to win is not such a unicorn, but in Texas it was something two whole generations had never experienced, so he really resonated with younger Texans. Beto seemed more representative of the Texas I grew up in - generally suburban, more respectful of the bi-lingual and trans-national diversity, liked rock music, not 70s country, skateboarded the way I did when I was in school, and did not put on the fake cowboy affectations like the accent, boots or hat, that so many fake Democrats had tried to do to look "authentic." The Texas I grew up in was suburbia and my high school was almost half Hispanic. I didn't rope calves on a ranch or whatever and wear cowboy boots except to dress-up events, so Beto really resonated as someone I could connect with.

If you look at why Beto did better than usual, it's basically the same reason Democrats did better in 2018. They did much better among suburbanites of all races, and voters of all races under the age of about 45. There are huge divide nationally based on urban/rural, age, and college education. Beto turned out younger people, college educated people, and suburban people at a higher rate then Democrats had done in 20 years.

It didn't have that much to do with himself - he was a decent candidate which for a Texas Democrat was a unicorn in that he did not suck or bore us to death. But not that impressive overall, just decent. What Beto benefitted from is that Texas has changed significantly in the last 20 years, and that is finally starting to manifest.

[As Above So Below...]

Because there are a lot of liberals in Texas. A LOT.

People stereotype what they think it’s like here and they don’t know much. Sure there are currently more conservatives here but Texas is trending towards being purple.

[tcualum]

I'm not a fan of Beto and wish he wasn't running. That being said, the last presidential race dropped the bar to limbo levels. Beto at least has political experience, doesn't constantly look like he's about to have a heart attack and he's still married to his first wife.

[stan4]

Originally Posted by tcualum

I'm not a fan of Beto and wish he wasn't running. That being said, the last presidential race dropped the bar to limbo levels. Beto at least has political experience, doesn't constantly look like he's about to have a heart attack and he's still married to his first wife.

These are standards now. Yeesh.

I've never been a Democrat, though I admired Ann Richards. And I don't know what the heck that thing in office is now, though I suspect it's a giant troll.

But, um, if the dems expect to get Trump out of office, they are gonna hafta come up with more than this current half-baked carnival side show of candidates.

Same problem republicans had in '08 and '12 - no viable candidates.

[BBMW]

Assuming (and I think this is a pretty safe assumption) that he's NOT going to win the Democratic presidential nomination, did he just kill any chance he might have had at statewide office in TX?

[Skipito]

I hope you don’t step on your mailbox.

[KathrynAragon]

Isn't he unemployed currently? And not likely to win the presidency. Doesn't sound all that successful to me.

As a woman, I am usually shocked to hear another woman say "Oh, but he's so handsome!" What? I don't get it.

And I don't personally care for his pretty filthy mouth.

Notice that I haven't said a word about his politics.

[lonestar2007]

LOL Beto. How anyone can take him seriously is beyond me. He always reminds me of one of those inflatable air tube/dancer puppets you sometimes see outside of a business that is trying to catch people's attention.

If you can manage to get pass his physical gyrations to try and focus on what he is actually saying, you realize PDQ it's just an endless stream hot air escaping out of the tube.

[malcorub16]

Originally Posted by ikoolu

mommy and daddy are big time den in EL Paso and EL Paso has a huge population of hispanics - and they mostly vote based on race not issues

So they voted for him because he is white?

[KathrynAragon]

Well, like it or not, Robert Francis O'Rourke is pasty white.