PAMPA - With time running out and fresh polls showing the race back to a statistical dead heat, Sen. Ted Cruz stumped Thursday in Pampa, a rural Republican stronghold in the Texas Panhandle that doesn't see many statewide politicians.

Voters were pleased to see him, though many confessed some puzzlement as to why he would bother -- or need to bother -- with just five days remaining before Election Day.

How often has Ray Collum, 76, and a lifelong resident, seen a Senate candidate come through the area?

"Not terribly often," he said. "We were talking about that this morning."

Not only aren't there many votes to scoop up, he said, "This is not going to be a swing county by any kind of a long shot."

Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton 6,500 to 701 votes in Gray County, which has 12,476 registered voters, 2,734 of whom had already voted early by the time Cruz's red, white and blue bus pulled into the civic center, where about 300 supporters awaited.

Collum is a retired computer service worker. His wife Tamara, 57, described herself jokingly as a "domestic goddess." She thought it was a fine idea for Cruz to stop in.

"I don't think it's a waste of his time at all," she said. "He realizes we're all important."

Cruz certainly needs to drum up every vote he can. Rep. Beto O'Rourke has been drawing huge crowds in the big cities and the Rio Grande Valley. He's raised a record-smashing $70 million, compared to about $30 million for Cruz. And a flurry of polls in the last few days show the Democrat has halted any momentum Cruz gained after their two debates.

An Emerson College poll released on Thursday showed Cruz leading by just 3 percentage points -- a statistical tie, given the margin of error. That jibed with a University of Texas at Tyler poll released a day earlier showing a 3.6-point lead for Cruz.

"If Ted Cruz had Beto's campaign manager he'd be leading by 20 points," said Dan Rogers, the Republican chairman in Potter County, where Cruz drew about 600 people at rally on Wednesday night as kids were out trick-or-treating.

In Pampa, an hour's drive east, Rogers conceded that he wasn't sure about the strategy involved in devoting so much time to the area.

"I recommended to his campaign manager that they stay downstate where all the votes are. Their comment was, you know, he loves coming to Amarillo. He loves coming to West Texas," Rogers said. "In the Panhandle he's going to get 80, 90 percent."

On the upside, he said, "Every vote here offsets a Beto supporter in Dallas or Austin."

Cruz is campaigning in the Fort Worth, Dallas and Houston areas in the next few days.

"Hunt where the ducks are," said Cruz campaign manager Jeff Roe. "We are going all over the state literally all over the state. I can't believe in the scope of this campaign with the breathless 254 coverage of Beto traipsing around Texas that we would be criticized in any way for going around the state. That's silly."

And he shrugged aside questions about the timing of rural stops. "We did do it one month ago and we did it three months ago."

A Texas Tech professor said it is a good strategy but won't reach a lot of voters.

"It's a matter of shoring up the base and hoping to stem the tide," said Tim Nokken, chairman of the Texas Tech political science department. "Those are fertile grounds for Republican voters. There's just not a lot of them there."

1 / 4Sen. Ted Cruz walked off of his campaign bus as he arrives at a Get Out The Vote Bus Tour rally at the MK Brown Civic Center on November 1, 2018 in Pampa, Texas.(Justin Sullivan / Getty Images) 2 / 4Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) speaks a Get Out The Vote Bus Tour rally at the MK Brown Civic Center on November 1, 2018 in Pampa, Texas. (Justin Sullivan / Getty Images) 3 / 4PAMPA, TEXAS - NOVEMBER 01: U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) speaks a Get Out The Vote Bus Tour rally at the MK Brown Civic Center on November 1, 2018 in Pampa, Texas. Sen. Cruz is campaigning throughout Texas as he battles democratic challenger Beto O'Rourke in a tight race to save his Senate seat. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)(775251518 / Getty Images) 4 / 4Dan Rogers of Amarillo, chairman of the Potter County Republican Party, talks about his candidate outside a rally for Ted Cruz in Pampa, Texas Nov. 1, 2018. (Todd Gillman/The Dallas Morning News)(Todd Gillman)

Rallying the base

Inside Pampa's M.K. Brown Civic Center, Cruz offered his usual litany of reasons Texans should protect the GOP majorities in Congress, and Trump's flank, and why they should worry about O'Rourke.

He boasted that "Texas is producing 33 percent more oil than we were in 2016" and warned that "if you want a thriving energy sector, you don't do what Beto O'Rourke has done, which is vote over and over again to tax and regulate them to death."

He vowed "to repeal the disaster, the train wreck that is Obamacare" and emphasized Trump's tax cuts and conservative judicial picks, while glossing over the trade wars and tariffs the president has launched, which hurt many farmers.

Trey Carroll, a Pampa resident who farms 4,000 acres of wheat with his father, said he's not worried about Cruz's prospects but isn't confident either.

"Somewhere in the middle. You listen to radio, it'll make you worried," he said. "People need to get out and vote. We know the Democrats' numbers are turning out."

He's 46 and can't recall any candidate for statewide office stopping in Pampa. "If they did, I missed it," he said.

"We're in the far reaches out here," Carroll said, but "he has a lot of support here."

Both rivals have stumped in small and remote corners of Texas. O'Rourke went to Muleshoe in August and even then, local residents marveled that he even bothered, though he's boasted of having campaigned in all 254 counties.

Surprising timing

It's the timing that's especially surprising, though Cruz had planned a Panhandle tour supported by the Texas Farm Bureau earlier this fall. It got delayed due to the Supreme Court confirmation fight over Brett Kavanaugh.

Chance Bowers, who lives "in the country" outside Pampa and raises cattle, corn, wheat, milo and cotton, thought Cruz was savvy to come through town, though he also couldn't recall anyone of that stature doing so before.

"Not lately," he said, giving it a moment's thought. "I'm just 32."

His young daughter kept pointing to the exit as the senator patiently shook hands and posed for photos after his speech.

Rural towns may be small, Bowers said, but the population adds up. "We're still a big part of the country," he said. "We just got to get somebody in there with the right morals and ethics."

Oscar Rojas, 41, an oil field worker who has run some local political campaigns, recalled then-Gov. Rick Perry stumping in Pampa one time about a decade ago to help a local state House candidate.

"Most of the attention is put into Houston and Dallas and the big cities with the population," Rojas said. "It shows that he understands that every vote counts."

Rojas said he's seen far more enthusiasm for O'Rourke than for any other Democrat in memory: yard signs, comments on social media, and much of it from "people who aren't political."

That said, "I'm 100 percent confident" Cruz will win reelection. "Beto is too liberal for Texas at this point."

Cruz polled the crowd, asking how many had already voted early. Nearly everyone raised a hand.

"We already voted for him," Annette James, 51, said before Cruz arrived, expressing surprise that the senator bothered stopping in Pampa this close to Election Day, or even at all. "It's too small a town."

O'Rourke supporter

Elsewhere in the audience, hidden in plain sight, was an ardent O'Rourke supporter.

Penny Smith, a 12-year Pampa resident and retired English-as-a-second-language teacher, was at a rally for the Democrat in Amarillo a few days earlier, with Beto stickers all over. Unlike much of the Pampa crowd, she wore no Make America Great Again gear nor Ted Cruz stickers.

"Look at this room," she said. "White. White. White. I love diversity. Why don't we love everyone?"

She saw Cruz's visit as a sign of a struggling campaign and a copycat move, because O'Rourke has done so much more retail politicking.

"He has to. He's desperate," she said. "Don't show up and act like you're in love with us now. Too late."