Beto Bets on the Border

After winning the Democratic primary for Beto O’Rourke’s congressional seat, his friend and political ally Veronica Escobar, an exuberant former El Paso County judge, began planning a four-day “Border Surge” bus tour to spread the gospel of Beto in the Texas borderlands, where he struggled in the primary.

The goal of the tour, which wrapped up this week, was to knock on thousands of doors and kick off a fevered get-out-the-vote push that will increase Democratic voter turnout in the 32 border counties by 15 percent. That lofty feat would bring in 170,000 new votes and, Escobar hopes, help put O’Rourke over the top in November.

In order to come even close to winning, O’Rourke needs to do a hundred different things that Democrats have failed to do in the past. That includes achieving record levels of turnout in the Rio Grande Valley, one of the largest- and fastest-growing pockets of Latino voters in the nation — and an area notorious for low voter participation.

After years of Republicans (and some Democrats) using the U.S.-Mexico border as a punching bag for their war on immigration, O’Rourke and his allies are hoping that a high-minded call for border community solidarity from El Paso to Brownsville — 825 miles to the southeast — will resonate with voters.

https://www.texasobserver.org/beto-bets-on-the-border/