TX-SEN: After halting start, Beto O'Rourke feeling the love in border counties

BROWNSVILLE — Beto O’Rourke’s final rally on a recent three-day campaign swing to the South Texas border was a sweaty, ecstatic affair, with 500 people jammed into the no-frills Tex-Mex Nightclub.

The other statewide Democratic candidates opened. Latina comedian Cristela Alonzo introduced O’Rourke — his Anglo heritage notwithstanding — as a genuine Tejano. A crew of 30 El Pasoans, who had traveled 800 miles on a balky bus, took the stage to vouch for “Beto’s” border-town bona fides. And the buoyant conjunto music of Los Cucuys de Rodney Rodriguez from Rio Grande City provided the soundtrack for what was billed as one of a series of Musica con Beto events.

O’Rourke was moved.

“There is an energy right now. And I got to tell you, there’s something about Brownsville and Harlingen and the Valley, but maybe even this part of the Valley, there’s just an intensity to it, and I don’t want to say anything that sounds too sappy, but I don’t have the words to talk about it otherwise,” he told the American-Statesman the next day before departing for Alice. “There is just a lot of love. I just feel like I’m part of something really wonderful.”

Barely six months earlier, in the March 6 Democratic primary in Cameron County, O’Rourke, the three-term congressman from El Paso seeking to upend U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, wasn’t feeling the love.

He barely edged out Sema Hernandez, a little-known Bernie Sanders supporter from Houston who defeated O’Rourke in more than 20 heavily Hispanic South Texas counties, sending a shiver through Texas Democrats who recalled the similarly poor performance of a previous heartthrob, Wendy Davis, under similar circumstances in the Democratic primary four years ago, foreshadowing her disappointing 20-point drubbing by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott in the general election.

But that was then, noted state Rep. Eddie Lucio III, D-Brownsville, as he exited the Tex-Mex stage after emceeing the event with a final announcement: “Beto will be outside at the jumpy house if you want a picture with the next United States senator.”

“I haven’t see a rally like that in a long time — since in the early ’90s, to be honest with you, when my dad was fighting those real hard-fought Senate races,” said Lucio, whose father, Eddie Lucio Jr., still represents Brownsville in the Texas Senate.

“To see our folks really fired up, inspired, upset about the state of affairs right now — they are going to move,” Lucio said. “It’s August, it’s hot, and it’s two days before school starts, and there’s a lot of places they could be. Imagine this in October.”

Was O’Rourke getting a late start in the Rio Grande Valley?

“I don’t think so,” Lucio said. “You’ve got to peak at the right time. You’ve got to conserve your energy. It’s a marathon, not a sprint, and I think he’s peaking and moving and gaining speed right when he needs to.”

But O’Rourke, 17 months into a relentless Senate campaign that has already taken him to all 254 Texas counties, is running the marathon as a sprint. Last weekend’s stops in Laredo, McAllen and Brownsville, drawing raucous crowds amid the campaign’s fecund fundraising and with poll after poll showing a competitive race — combined with his uncanny ability to draw national attention with viral video clips, most recently showing him skateboarding in a Brownsville Whataburger parking lot and another in which he explained his support for professional football players kneeling for the national anthem — suggested a campaign on a roll.


https://www.mystatesman.com/news/state--regional-govt--politics/after-halting-start-beto-rourke-feeling-the-love-border-counties/Hmi85NpVGwdmkh6Y4b2G3O/


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