If the 2018 midterm election had a marquee, top-of-the-ticket match-up, one contender would have to be the Senate race in the Lone Star State, which pitted incumbent Republican Sen. Ted Cruz against Rep. Beto O’Rourke.
And it’s still, on some level, hard to believe this was the case.
Taking Texas blue is the perennially unrealized dream of Democrats: always on the way, never quite arriving. And when the O’Rourke phenomenon emerged, it too initially felt like another, obvious false dawn. Beto seemed too good to be true — and held in higher esteem by voters outside the borders of the state where it mattered most.
But on Election Night, for a minute or two, the possibility that Cruz might go down was beguilingly close. And even though Cruz’s support finally came home, denying O’Rourke the breakthrough he sought, the “Beto effect” helped propel many other progressives to wins in Texas — many in places they might have had no right to expect.
But was the O’Rourke phenomenon a one-off example of a unique candidate catching fire briefly? Or was it something that Democrats, if not O’Rourke himself, can build upon in the election cycles to come — at last fulfilling that dream of a bluer, if not blue, Texas? To find out, ThinkProgress spoke with one reporter who studied the race, and the candidates, up close: Texas native Ana Marie Cox, host of Crooked Media’s “With Friends Like These” podcast, who in 2018 spent time with Cruz and O’Rourke.
So, what did you think of the results on Election Night? Did it go the way you thought it would, or was it a surprise? I suppose I was a little surprised: I reckoned that Cruz’s voters would come home and he’d win going away.
I guess I got it right in the end, but wow — it actually took some doing, it seemed, to ultimately put Beto away!
I thought it would be close. I actually thought O’Rourke had a shot at winning. That said, I’m not sure what more he could have done. I think he did the best a Democrat in Texas could possibly do in 2018, against Ted Cruz. I sort of wonder if Kavanaugh re-energized Republicans that otherwise would have stayed home — I don’t think it changed anyone’s mind to vote Cruz instead of Beto, but I could see some real Trumpers — who were largely suspicious of Cruz — decided to help him out for the sake of the Court.
The O’Rourke versus Cruz saga occupied a lot of attention in this midterm election cycle, but I’ll be honest — I always felt a little aloof about this race. I have this real mistrust of hype, and of “celebrity,” and I really felt like it was really easy to get sucked into the “celebrity” side of Beto O’Rourke. Is it now safe to trust Beto O’Rourke as a real political phenomenon?
He’s the real deal. In fact, this may sound weird, but I think the coverage almost over-emphasized his charisma and didn’t focus enough on what I think really animated his voters: his amazing capacity for empathy. He’s a good speaker, and he’s got stage presence, but I don’t think that’s what people responded to. He makes people feel heard. In that way, I think he has more in common with Clinton than Obama — who he usually gets compared to. His politics are also genuinely progressive…and thus, to my mind, more empathetic.
I hope the pundit class puts as much time thinking about Beto’s platform as they do yammering about his “celebrity.” Also, they should be forced to actually watch a town hall or two of his.
I hope the pundit class puts as much time thinking about Beto’s platform as they do yammering about his “celebrity.” Also, they should be forced to actually watch a town hall or two of his.
I do love that he holds his mic like a punk rocker and not an emcee.
Think about his NFL protest answer that went viral: what people responded to wasn’t his eloquence — I don’t think — so much as his ability to take both sides seriously, and then give an earnest argument for his own beliefs.
That was a key moment in the race, wasn’t it? Somehow he managed to avoid giving some sort of ham-handed answer — “I just hope we can get back to football,” is the classic sort of have-it-both-ways answer for a Democrat — but when the critics came for him, their criticism didn’t really stick. And it didn’t stick in Texas!
And while I love me some Obama, when we think about the stuff that made his celebrity, it isn’t really about his arguments or his great answers to questions — it was about what he represented, and his uplifting overall message. And Beto has that, but, again, I don’t think that’s what people responded to — it’s not what people in Texas responded to. A charismatic celebrity who symbolized change — Wendy Davis — raised tons of national money and lost by double digits in Texas.
And don’t forget: He did literally hundreds of town halls, he showed up in every county in Texas, including ones where he had no prayer of winning. I think that showed a kind of humility and willingness to work for respect and trust that resonated. When I was in Texas, it was only the most Trumpy Republicans that told me Beto was a cross-dressing socialist. More moderate Republicans said something to the effect of, “I like him but he’s just too liberal.” And some of them told me they were voting for him anyway.
Also, let it be said that many Republicans in Texas hate Ted Cruz with a fiery passion.
One of the exit poll data points that has received a lot of attention is that Beto won with Native Texans, and Ted Cruz carried people who moved to Texas. So what was it that Texans responded to — can it be characterized? Was it basically down to O’Rourke’s famous propensity to work a lot harder to be present and accountable to his would-be constituents? All the way back during his first run for national office, he was this inveterate door knocker, so there was clearly no need to change a winning formula. Do you think that this had more to do with his work ethic, or in Cruz did he draw the perfect opponent?
I think it’s basically, yeah, hard work and accountability. I think he probably peeled off some votes from Cruz with his argument that “you might not always agree with me, but I’m going to be honest with you and do my best for Texas.” And, yeah, he did draw the perfect opponent to hit with that message. Cruz’s slipperiness and his ambition are two things that rub almost everyone the wrong way — and while Beto is ambitious, sure, I think he successfully argued that “you’ll always know what I’m up to.”
That’s how running as an outright progressive actually worked for him, even among conservatives/moderates, because there wasn’t a feeling that his positions might change as soon as he was elected.
That’s how running as an outright progressive actually worked for him, even among conservatives/moderates, because there wasn’t a feeling that his positions might change as soon as he was elected.
I don’t know if the strategy would work against [Texas’ other GOP senator, John] Cornyn. It might work on a national level, though, sure! I was talking to someone earlier today that Beto definitely benefited from running against an unusually unpopular politician, but you know who else is unusually unpopular? Donald Trump.
Oh, and we can’t get too far in this conversation without acknowledging how hard Beto worked to turn out young people and people of color. Groups for whom that message of hard work and authenticity are also very resonant!
Would it be fair to say that these are the voters that formed the basis of this enormous coattail effect that O’Rourke had in the state?
I don’t see how that can’t be true! And what a coattail it was. Black and Latino candidates making unprecedented gains. I mean, obviously: every single one of those candidates worked like hell themselves, but having Beto out there canvassing and recruiting? The results are staggering: 19 black women elected judges in Houston!
The changes to the judicial landscape in the state are staggering. Democrats have majority control on seven of the state’s 14 appeals courts, up from three. Whole slates of GOP judges were wiped out.
Wow, I was just looking at those Houston results: 59 candidates for county, family, and juvenile court judgeships unseated Republican judges and will transform the local judiciary. Yes, that’s staggering.
And yes, tons of progressive candidates all over. Again: every one of these candidates worked for it, to be sure. But just a perfect storm of energy, candidate, circumstance.
The impact of his coattails are too significant to be ignored in the short term — but it’s being discussed in some circles as a huge step toward the purpling of a red state. Can the Beto effect be built upon without a Beto?
I think the purpling of Texas is happening, and was happening without him. He goosed it along. It’s Texas’ demographic destiny, really.
Well, do you know something about Beto’s health that no one else does? Because he’s only 46… so he’s gonna be around for awhile. I don’t know if we need to worry about Texas politics “without Beto,” is what I’m saying. But I get your question. I think the purpling of Texas is happening, and was happening without him. He goosed it along. It’s Texas’ demographic destiny, really.
[…] I think he’ll probably run in 2020 and I hope he does…. understandable if he doesn’t, of course. That’s not too far away and he sacrificed a lot to get as close as he did this year.
I don’t know if you saw this dumb article, but Philip Klein had a piece in the Washington Examiner that was titled, “Why Beto O’Rourke is going to lose in one photo.” And the point, such as it was — I mean, the real point was that whoever was in charge of the content mines at the Examiner had a bayonet in Klein’s back that day — was that someone in the D.C. Metro area had a Beto bumper sticker on their car, which I guess meant, “This guy is big in the liberal urban enclaves but not Texas.” Really good end-of-the-cul-de-sac analysis from someone who’s probably not left those enclaves himself in years.
Regardless, is it so bad to be a politician from Texas who people outside the state connect with, or are inspired by?
You are talking to someone whose husband owns two Beto shirts. (Granted, we have a Texas connection.) But, to run in the direction your question leads: no, I do not think that is bad. That Klein article was dumb, and I suspect he knew it. Would anyone run the same article about seeing a Trump bumper sticker in Manhattan (presumably not on a Trump-owned car)?
The real rejoinder to Klein’s story are all the pictures of overflowing town halls in deep red congressional districts.
By the way, Beto had some great graphic designers — they were legitimately cool shirts, which is not something you can say about every campaign’s swag.
Before I let you go, I should ask about Ted Cruz too. For the sake of background: You did a very brief interview with him back in 2015 for the New York Times, and what was amazing about that interview is that while it was hardly Frost/Nixon, you actually did this amazing thing: you put me in touching distance with a Ted Cruz that I came very very close to liking. Which…I did not see coming.
Flash foward to this year, and you got to spend a lot more time with him, for Harpers’, and it really felt like he fought your every effort to humanize him every step of the way.
Nevertheless, you’ve had this remarkably empathetic relationship with Cruz. What do you think this whole experience was like for him?
Before I spent that extended amount of time with him, I think I’d have said that this experience was probably hard for him, to be faced with the consequences of years of moral shortcuts and interpersonal abrasiveness. Now, I don’t know. He won, and I know he thinks of that proof of moral goodness. Every time I asked him about why people don’t like him, he would give me the total number of votes he got in his senate election and in the presidential run. He seemed not to understand that was an answer to a different question. So I suspect he feels vindicated and will have no impulse to examine what he might have done to put himself in a position to have it come so close.
He may regret having spent so much time with me.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.