Well, Hell has frozen over because I actually agree with U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R. TX) on this:
Sen Ted Cruz (R-Texas) has a warning for his fellow Republicans: The party is in danger of losing both houses of Congress in November.
Cruz said the “extreme left” could turn out in big numbers, motivated to fight the agenda of President Donald Trump.
Cruz also said that if the economy is booming and conservatives show up at the polls, his party could pick up as many as seven seats in the Senate and hold a “large, functioning majority.”
However, he also warned of the opposite scenario:
“If conservatives are complacent, and mark my words, we are going to see historic turnout from the extreme left in November, which means if conservatives stay home, we have the potential, we could lose both houses of Congress.”
If Democrats take control of the House, he predicted that Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) would become speaker again and immediately initiate impeachment proceedings against Trump.
Closer to home, Cruz also warned of a possible blue wave in the Lone Star State.
“In Texas, if conservatives stay home, if we rest on our laurels, we could see Texas turn blue,” he said. “We could see every statewide official in the state becoming a Democrat.”
And Cruz has every reason to be worried:
Democrats in deep-red Texas turned out in the largest midterm primary election numbers in more than a decade Tuesday, propelling women candidates toward challenges to entrenched male Republicans in Congress and venting their anger at President Donald Trump in the first state primary of 2018.
The biggest question was whether Texas is just the start of what's to come nationwide. Energized Texas Democrats showed up despite the long odds this November of ousting Republicans such as U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz -- who released a radio ad after clinching the GOP nomination Tuesday night, telling voters that Democratic opponent Beto O'Rourke "wants to take our guns."
O'Rourke, a congressman from El Paso, has called for banning AR-15-style assault rifles in wake of last month's mass shooting at a Florida high school that killed 17 people.
Neither that tragedy nor a mass shooting at a Texas church last fall played as dominant campaign issues in Texas, but with the GOP's majority in Congress on the line this fall, Democrats came out in force. Republicans kept their edge in the total number of votes cast but Democrats made significant inroads in what had been a lopsided GOP dominance for decades.
Democrats have their sights on flipping three GOP-controlled congressional seats in Texas that backed Hillary Clinton over Trump in 2016, including a Houston district where two women were the top vote-getters in early returns in a race likely to go to a May runoff. Another is a sprawling district that runs along the Texas-Mexico border, where Gina Ortiz-Jones advanced to a May runoff and another woman, Judy Canales, was battling to join her.
And it didn’t take Cruz long to go after his opponent, Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D. TX):
Even before the primary votes were counted Tuesday in Texas, Sen. Ted Cruz (R) went on the attack against his November opponent.
Cruz and Democratic U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke (Tex.) were both quickly declared winners by the Associated Press on Tuesday after polls in the state closed. And, quickly, both candidates turned toward facing each other in November.
Cruz called out O’Rourke by name in a conference call with reporters before polls closed and then repeated his criticisms of O’Rourke’s support of gun-control measures, the Affordable Care Act, and “amnesty and open borders” in a TV interview after results were in.
“The good news is that there are a lot more conservatives in Texas than liberals,” Cruz said. “If conservatives show up in November, we’ll be just fine.”
It was a fresh sign that the 2018 election in Texas, which has not elected a statewide Democrat since 1994, could be more competitive than the state is accustomed to.
O’Rourke, 45, a three-term congressman, still faces an uphill battle. But there are signs he could at least keep November’s election close, including an impressive turnout among Democrats for Tuesday’s primaries, robust fundraising reports and polls showing declines in popularity for Cruz and President Trump.
And since Cruz is so unlikable, other Republicans are echoing his concern:
The unique unlikability of Ted Cruz was, for a time, an asset in deep-red Texas. Elected to the Senate in 2012 on a wave of Tea Party discontent, Cruz quickly established his outsider credentials by shutting down the government, grandstanding, maligning his colleagues, blithely stoking ignorance and generally making himself the most hated man in the Senate. “If you killed Ted Cruz on the floor of the Senate, and the trial was in the Senate, nobody would convict you,” Lindsey Graham said in 2016, only half joking. Conservative hardliners loved it, right up until they discovered an even more unpleasant avatar of populist outrage in Donald Trump.
Since then, Cruz’s once unavoidable presence on the national stage has been diminished. And political strategists in Texas are now beginning to credibly wonder if Cruz, whose abrasive posturing made him a 2016 presidential front-runner, may be truly vulnerable in his re-election bid this November. Cruz is facing a formidable challenger in Beto O’Rourke, a charismatic congressman from El Paso with the best shot in a generation at turning Texas blue. O’Rourke, who is all but assured to secure the Democratic nomination when Texas voters cast their primary ballots Tuesday, remains a relative unknown. But he has far higher approval ratings than both Cruz and Trump, whose negative favorability is hanging over the race. In the state, battle-tested political insiders are now conceding his chances as at least a legit contender. “With Ted Cruz, familiarity breeds contempt. It continues to be true that no statewide elected official is more disliked and less popular than Cruz,” one longtime Democratic strategist in Texas told me. “Surely that truth is a part of Beto’s successful dynamic thus far.” Harold Cook, a veteran Democratic operative in the state put it more succinctly: “He is the first Republican, maybe, in a long time that has to go around one of the biggest states with the most media markets on Earth and convince voters that they are wrong about him.”
O’Rourke got another boost this week as early voting numbers rolled in, showing a massive uptick in Democratic turnout. According to the latest data, Democrats outvoted Republicans in Texas’s top 15 counties. In the top 10 counties with the highest number of registered voters, Democratic turnout more than doubled compared to four years ago. “The early voting numbers are pretty incredible,” said a former G.O.P. political operative who now works in the Texas business community. “It definitely shows that Democrats are ready to vote. They’re ready to send a message.
It would be tough to find a more strikingly different pair than O’Rourke and Cruz. While Cruz has emerged as a paragon of Washington dysfunction, aligned with the obstinance of the Tea Party and House Freedom Caucus, O’Rourke has been extolling bipartisanship. Not reaching across the aisle is a “pretty fucked up way to run a country,” O’Rourke told me last year, after he crisscrossed the country with his fellow Texas congressman, Republican Will Hurd. “I am not a rocket scientist, but the only way you can get something done in D.C. when you have Republican majority control in the House and the Senate is to work with Republicans, so I am going to work with Republicans.”
G.O.P. operatives initially dismissed O’Rourke, who has vehemently opposed a border wall, as too liberal for Texas. “We have never seen anybody with his ideology elected in Texas. If elected, he would be one of the most liberal senators in the nation. He would rival Elizabeth Warren,” one longtime Republican operative, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told me last year. But the political climate has shifted dramatically in the last several months, with Democrats running the table in a series of special elections that could presage a wave election in 2018. And O’Rourke has capitalized on the upsurge. In a sprawling state with 23 media markets, where a Senate campaign can cost $30 million, O’Rourke is currently out-fundraising Cruz, taking in $2.3 million in the first quarter of 2018, compared to Cruz’s $803,000. “I never thought I’d point [to] this, but he’s getting pretty good crowd sizes, he’s getting some good coverage, he out-fund-raised Ted Cruz—which are things that are showing enthusiasm,” the former Republican operative told me. “Myself, along with most of the other political class, ignored that stuff in 2016 with Trump, and I think it would be foolish to ignore just because it’s Texas and [O’Rourke] is a little bit further [left of center].”
And Cruz has no problem resorting to the lowest, slimiest tactics to win:
Days before the Texas primary, one of Sen. Ted Cruz's primary opponents was the target of the senator's own campaign calls.
Rather than asking Stefano de Stefano, a Republican running against Cruz, for his support in the March 6 primary, the caller, paid by Cruz’s campaign, repeatedly refused to acknowledge that race exists.
In a recording provided by de Stefano, the caller insisted that Cruz is in a general election contest against Democrat Beto O’Rourke and ignored inquiries about the March 6 primary.
Asked by de Stefano whether there are any Republicans running against Cruz, the caller replied, “right now sir this is a general election, it’s just him going up against Beto O’Rourke, a two-way ticket for that Senate spot.”
O’Rourke and Cruz both face primaries before that race. Cruz is expected to win his primary easily, and his challengers have struggled to raise funds or endorsements.
The caller who reached de Stefano identified himself from a campaign firm based in Iowa, Campaign HQ. Cruz paid that firm roughly $50,000 last month, according to a filing with the Federal Election Commission.
Campaign HQ’s website calls it a conservative fundraising, voter identification and campaign firm, known for its “creative solutions” and “quick turnaround.”
Cruz’s campaign declined to comment on the calls, but confirmed that it uses Campaign HQ as a vendor. The firm works for a number of conservative politicians, including Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.
“I find it insulting to Texas that Cruz – as the frontrunner, no less –felt it necessary to bring in activists from outside our state to interfere in Texas’ elections with blatant omissions to his constituents regarding his primary challengers,” de Stefano said.
Another reason Cruz is nervous is because the GOP’s gerrymandering of the Lone Star State shows that the chickens are coming home to roost:
Deep in the heart of conservative Texas lies its liberal capital of Austin — a city jokingly referred to as “a blueberry in the tomato soup of Texas.” Given its left-leaning politics, it might seem strange that of Austin’s six congressional representatives, five are Republican.
That’s because during 2011 redistricting, Texas Republicans effectively diluted the voting power of Austin — and the equally liberal Travis County it sits in — by splitting the county into five congressional districts and carving Austin into six districts.
But with signs of a blue wave potentially ready to hit Texas along with the rest of the country during the 2018 midterms, some political observers are wondering whether Texas Republicans’ dramatic gerrymandering could backfire. Austin voters now have the potential to erode Republican margins in each of the five Republican-controlled districts and perhaps even flip one — the 21st Congressional District.
“Partisan mapmakers tend to overreach,” said elections analyst Dave Wasserman, the US House editor of the Cook Political Report. “Just because the plan has worked well until now doesn’t mean it will work well in 2018.”
Now Beto has been going all over the state, even in GOP territory:
Texas Democratic Rep. Beto O’Rourke is hoping to defeat Sen. Ted Cruz, and end a 30-year streak of statewide losses for his party, by taking his grassroots-driven campaign to every single one of Texas’ 254 counties — including the deep-red ones that Democrats have ignored for decades.
“I don't know if I'm going to win more votes than the last Democrat who ran in those counties, but I know that not enough Democrats have been showing up in those counties in the first place,” he told VICE News in an interview from the road during a seven-stop day on the campaign trail last month. “And they haven't been reflecting the needs of those counties in what they say on the campaign trail.”
And he's been showing up. On a single Saturday in February, he visited seven Republican-leaning rural counties in West Texas. Whether voters will like it is another story. During a stop in Brown County, which voted for Trump by 86 percent, he touted his support for an assault weapons ban. In Parker County, where Trump won 82 percent of the vote, he was unapologetically pro-choice.
And Beto also understands changing demographics in Texas is also a big factor in this race and is aiming for high turnout amongst Black and Latino voters:
O'Rourke concedes the Texas coalition he's building could be more inclusive.
"I'm hearing some really tough things I need to hear," he told the gathering at Mercado, a cultural center, gallery and cafe. "I'm going to act on them. Like you have said, it's ours to lose, if we fail to make the most of it."
Even though the crowds don't yet reflect it, the strength of DFW for Beto, the group pushing his candidacy in North Texas, is its diversity. They have ambassadors in most cities in the county. They are white, black, Asian and Hispanic.
Meanwhile, Cruz is expected to cruise in his lightly contested GOP primary. Cruz, who is of Cuban heritage, insists that his brand of conservatism can be sold to minority voters, but his campaigns for the Senate and the White House have had little appeal for blacks and Hispanics.
While O'Rourke probably doesn't have to worry about Cruz making inroads with minority voters, he can't risk having part of his Democratic base stay home, much like they did with 2016 presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.
O'Rourke told The Dallas Morning News that he knew the importance of campaigning in minority neighborhoods.
"The only way we're going to win is if are leadership reflects the strength of this state," O'Rourke said at Mercado. "We're here today to follow and to listen and to learn. I'm really looking forward to this."
And Beto is a tireless campaigner:
O'Rourke is working to capitalize on that Democratic excitement in what many strategists in both parties still consider a long-shot campaign.
He’s often seen stepping down from his Toyota Tundra pickup, bleary-eyed and bestubbled, into a town hall or diner or coffee shop. Those who can't attend in person are invited to join digitally, as most activities are posted on Facebook Live. Working on just four hours of sleep, he greets Texas voters, saying that he’s the candidate for them. O'Rourke has been on a 12-month tour of his home state, working all of its 254 counties. So far, he’s visited 223 of them.
O'Rourke's plan borrows from the playbook of Barack Obama's first presidential bid: campaign in deeply conservative districts to mitigate the size of the loss there while driving up turnout in urban areas. His relentless touring schedule, however, comes from his days as a post-hardcore guitarist in the 1990s, when his band Foss released a 7-inch record called The El Paso Pussycats. (The drummer of his group, Cedric Bixler-Zavala, went on to find widespread success in bands like At the Drive-In and The Mars Volta.)
“We had been on the road nonstop for years in this shitty little van, playing shows in front of six people night after night," O'Rourke said. “People connected to that, and that was the foundation of our success.”
He’s hoping to form those slow and hard-earned connections once again, even if that means a year of nonstop campaigning. “I could be safe and not screw it up, not win but not lose," O'Rourke said. “Or we could go for broke and run like there’s nothing to lose.”
And Beto’s got the right image and tone to pit up against Cruz:
In more than a decade in politics, O’Rourke has cultivated the image of a crusading, hard-campaigning young Democrat with a punk rocker’s disregard for the established political order. In person, O’Rourke—tall and thin, with a long, angular face and a penchant for blue dress shirts and sweeping hand gestures—is more reminiscent of Barack Obama than JFK. He uses rock-’n’-roll metaphors to explain policy: A woman at the Sealy town hall asked O’Rourke how he’d be different not only from Republicans but establishment Democrats, and O’Rourke answered by talking about how, in searching for more authentic music, he’d discovered punk rock as a teenager and started a band of his own.
“What we were rejecting, unwittingly, and I wouldn’t have put it this way, was corporate rock-’n’-roll,” he said. “I don’t want you, in New York or L.A., deciding what I was going to listen to in El Paso. We in this campaign are rejecting corporate politics, literally rejecting corporate donations filtered through PACs, the special interests, and yes, the party bosses. I don’t want to know what their focus groups say, or their polls show, or their consultants have tested for me to repeat here. I want to know what’s on your mind.”
Politicians who talk like outsiders are a dime a dozen, but in O’Rourke, Democrats have one who can back up that image with an undefeated electoral history and a track record of beating incumbents within his own party. Even O’Rourke’s geographic origins make him an outsider: El Paso is far from the state’s traditional centers of population and power; it’s as far from Houston as Chicago is from Philadelphia.
ut Democrats are coming out to meet O’Rourke when he comes to them, and they appreciate the gesture.
“It’s important that he’s able to come and take questions from the public, town-hall style,” said Waller County Democratic Chairwoman Rosa Harris. “A lot of candidates are not willing to put themselves out and face the voters, and he is. He has courage, he’s intelligent, and he’s definitely spot-on on the issues.”
That sounds like quite a package for any politician—particularly for one who’s running against the Moby-Dick of Republican incumbents.
His support for legalizing marijuana, banning assault weapons, standing for Dreamers, Medicare For All and a number of other progressive issues will also be key factors to energize the youth vote:
O’Rourke’s campaign coordinator, 24-year-old Brianna Carmen of El Paso, describes O’Rourke’s philosophy as “throwing out the traditional playbook” of Texas candidates, who typically focus on big cities like Houston, Austin, and Dallas. Carmen tells Teen Vogue, “I think Beto’s punk rock past really influences how he wants to tour every place; he wants to meet the people. It’s him on the road; it’s him meeting you where you are.” This influence is apparent in the way O'Rourke is running his senate campaign, live-streaming everything as he crisscrosses the state to visit towns seldom seen by politicians.
Houston high school senior and O’Rourke campaign “super volunteer” Lekha Sunder (18) tells Teen Vogue, “A huge part of O'Rourke's philosophy is making sure that marginalized groups and groups that have otherwise been neglected feel like they have a voice in American politics.” She said that’s why he’s so eager to see small Texas towns and to talk at Texas high schools.
Campaign volunteer Ricky Longoria (16, of Falfurrias, Texas) found out about O’Rourke through Facebook. He emphasizes that it’s this accessibility that makes O'Rourke different. “I like that he’s always live-streaming his events,” Ricky told Teen Vogue. “And he’s always informing people what he’s doing.” Always is the key word here. O’Rourke’s campaign has live-streamed everything from a game of “donut roulette” in the car with his mom and staffers to four town halls in a single day.
The combined effect of all this Facebook activity is a profound reframing of what it means to be a political candidate in 2018. O’Rourke is offering a window directly into the campaign process for anyone who wants to look.
His campaign scheduler, 22-year-old Erica Rodarte (also from El Paso), says that “for my friends who don’t work in the campaign, I think [social media] is the first connection they have to Beto.” She told Teen Vogue, “They think it’s so amazing that a candidate wants to reach out and connect to people our age through these types of social media.”
Congressman O’Rourke told Teen Vogue that the youth vote is a priority for him: “I feel like there are so many amazing people who have so much to contribute, and age or experience shouldn’t be a limiting factor,” he said. Speaking about young voters, O’Rourke says: “They get that the political system really is rigged, and to some degree it’s fixed by people who have this extraordinary concentration of wealth or power or influence, and opening it up to everybody is a real change in our democracy for the positive.”
For young people galvanized by his campaign in Texas, the fall midterm offers the potential for an alternative future. As high school student Lekha Sunder puts it, “If there’s anything that American politics needs today, it’s more people who are willing to take responsibility for their actions, and more people who are willing to speak up for people who don’t have voices."
Even national Democrats are feeling great about his candidacy. Here’s an e-mail I received from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee:
Breaking news from Texas: Democrat Beto O’Rourke just won the Texas Senate primary and is now our official nominee to take on Ted Cruz in the general election.
Already, CNN is reporting that “Texas is no longer Solid Republican.” Now Beto is counting on us to keep the momentum going. He and all our Democratic Senate candidates need our urgent support to kick off the general election with the strongest possible start.
Pitch in $48 right now to help Beto and all our Democratic Senate candidates take on Republicans like Ted Cruz everywhere »
All eyes will be watching right now to see if Democrats have what it takes to fight for every seat. This is a crucial moment in the fight for the Senate and Democrats are counting on your support.
Thanks for stepping up,
Team DSCC
If you don’t want to contribute to the DSCC, then contribute directly to Beto's campaign and let’s make this happen. Click here to donate and get involved with Beto’s campaign.