Rep. Beto O’Rourke fought as hard as he could to defeat GOP Sen. Ted Cruz in the Texas Senate Race, but ultimately, he didn’t have the votes to bring home the gold. In the last year, O’Rourke rose to fame as the poster child for the future of the Democratic Party. People lauded him as the next Obama, a candidate who was progressive enough to convince thousands of Texans to vote for him, while still remaining true to his left-leaning base. If James Dean took a Poli Sci course with John F. Kennedy and earned a solid B-, you’d get Beto O’Rourke.
Prior to his defeat at the hands of Sen. Ted Cruz, O’Rourke traveled to every single county in the great state of Texas, all 254 of them, whilst riding in his 2014 Toyota pick-up truck. If that’s not the most American way to run for office, then I don’t know what is. The Atlantic compared O’Rourke to Republican Senator Marco Rubio who ran and lost in the 2016 primaries, saying that both individuals stole the hearts of their national parties as “young, handsome, eloquent, prolific fund-raisers.”
A national sense of physical attraction to O’Rourke aside, many are still in shock that he lost the senate race. I believe that while every major publication touted the man as the bipartisan champion, capable of uniting the right and the left with the flick of a wrist, he was not the man the media portrayed him to be. O’Rourke regularly called for the impeachment of President Trump, publicly advocated for Medicare, and made “calls to abolish the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE).” Though Sen. Cruz applauded O’Rourke’s efforts by saying that both he and O’Rourke “are fighting for principles and values we believe in,” this doesn’t change the fact that Beto O’Rourke is nowhere close to being the centrist media had made him out to be.
Nevertheless, as we look to the 2020 Presidential Primaries, America is still hot with “Betomania.”
Given his pure, unadulterated charisma demonstrated in the Texas Senate race, many Democratic fundraisers are interested in giving Beto O’Rourke the resources necessary to be a serious candidate for the 2020 Presidential Election. O’Rourke raised $38 million in the third quarter of his race alone, and donors and political operatives around the country want to know if he will, in fact, be running for a spot on the Democratic ticket.
Robert Wolf, an investment banker who raised shekels for Obama in 2008 and 2012 commented on Betomania:
“He’s game changing. If he decides to run, he will be in the top five. You can’t deny the electricity and excitement around the guy. I get the hype. I think there’s an incredible amount of excitement around Beto. A lot of people have comparisons around him and a Robert Kennedy or a Barack Obama. And the [Democratic] party likes young, ambitious and aspirational.”
–Robert Wolf
O’Rourke made it clear prior to running for the Senate that he had no plans of running for president, promising to serve six years in the Senate if elected, going as far as to say that even if he didn’t win, he’d still be “back in El Paso,” to get back to work. While Beto’s spirit is indomitable, his unwillingness to ride the blue wave of support for 2020 is disappointing. The nation adored him throughout his campaign, and he could capitalize on this rallying energy.
However, Christian Archer, a San Antonio-based Democratic strategist, told Politico that “there’s a fuse” on Betomania “and the question is how long will that last if he doesn’t make a move within a window of time.”
–Christian Archer
