After learning about Sebastian Esquivel, a Latino man who felt the Texas race ‘doesn’t really matter’, O’Rourke cold called Esquivel to help him register to vote

Beto O’Rourke, the charismatic Democrat who is stirring things up in Texas with his attempt to turf Ted Cruz out of the US Senate, is famous for leaving no stone unturned.

He has visited all of Texas’s 254 counties this past year. That’s a lot of shoe leather in a state larger than France.

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But just how far O’Rourke is prepared to go in trying to wrest the state from being Republican stranglehold (the last time Texas sent a Democrat to the US Senate was in 1993) only became clear after the Guardian published an article on his campaign last week.

The end of the piece described a 21-year-old Latino man called Sebastian Esquivel who works in his family’s restaurant, Milupita Taco House, in Gonzales, a small cowboy town south of Austin. Some level of detachment from Esquivel was perhaps to be expected, given the low level of political engagement and turnout among Hispanic Texans.

But Esquivel revealed that only one member of his 20-strong extended Hispanic family had ever voted. Having been ignored for so long by politicians of all colors, what was the point?

“To be honest, to me it doesn’t really matter,” Esquivel said.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Sebastian Esquivel, 21, previously told the Guardian he chooses not to vote in elections because he doesn’t feel it will make a difference in his daily life. Photograph: Katie Hayes Luke/The Guardian

It turns out that O’Rourke – having read the Guardian story – was shocked by that comment. He discussed it with his senior staffers, and decided something had to be done.

“We all agreed that this November is too important for Sebastian and any Texan not to know what we’re fighting for,” Chris Evans, the campaign’s communications manager, posted on Medium. “But we also agreed that it’s not on Sebastian to reach out to us. It’s on us to reach out to him.”

So what did they do? From his car as he was travelling to Houston for a campaign event, O’Rourke tracked down the phone number of the restaurant and cold called Esquivel.

With the Hispanic cook on the line, the candidate outlined his progressive policies, which include a commitment to immigration reform, universal healthcare and gun control, and asked Esquivel in return about his concerns. Esquivel said that not only had he never voted, he wasn’t even registered to vote.

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O’Rourke used his network of fired-up young volunteers to send a field worker to Gonzales, some 70 miles away, to persuade Esquivel to register. The cook duly did so, and the O’Rourke volunteer then drove him to the post box to mail it – this on the final day of registration allowed in Texas.

To keep the story in perspective, one vote in a state with 28 million people is but a drop in the ocean. Though important tracking polls have O’Rourke and Cruz essentially tied, a new poll from Quinnipiac University gives a more sober assessment with Cruz up by nine points.

But what it does underline are the exceptional lengths to which O’Rourke is willing to go to engage people normally excluded from the political process. That’s how he thinks he can win back his state from the rightwing Tea Party fanatics who he believes currently control it (last year Tea Party Republicans introduced a law permitting open carry of swords on Texan sidewalks).

It’s not clear that he’s going to pull it off. But no one can question how hard he’s trying.