Updated Saturday at 5:20 p.m. with photos and video.

WASHINGTON — For the last 14 months, Congressman Beto O’Rourke has crisscrossed Texas, knocked on doors, run 5Ks, eaten tacos and gulped coffee with strangers in a live-streamed effort to unseat Sen. Ted Cruz.

On Saturday, the Democrat reached a milestone by holding a town hall at the Santa Fe Depot museum in Cooke County, about 70 miles north of Dallas. According to his campaign, he has now visited all 254 Texas counties since announcing his candidacy last year. Cooke County voters haven't supported a Democrat for Senate since Lloyd Bentsen's re-election bid in 1988, according to a local official, but O'Rourke isn't fazed.

"I really wanted to get to know the people that I want to represent. And I just can't think of a better way to do it than to show up and be there," O'Rourke said of his approach in an interview with The Dallas Morning News.

Is hitting every county an arbitrary goal or a useful tactic? Texas political experts are divided, and there are a number of candidates who’ve hit that mark without winning. O’Rourke casts it as a way to hear about issues facing everyday Texans in every corner of the state. With five months left before Election Day, there’s plenty of time to focus on the vote-rich major cities.

There are practical reasons for the slog, as well as questions about whether old-fashioned retail politics in a state as vast as Texas can give O'Rourke the kind of boost he needs.

The strategy has helped the once little-known Democrat from El Paso raise his national profile — though recent polls show he has a long way to go among Texas voters — and grow his war chest. If nothing else, the feat also gives O’Rourke a talking point against Cruz, a Republican he portrays as an out-of-touch lawmaker more interested in the White House than in Texas.

1 / 8Chrissy Kleberg takes pictures of her daughter Kathrine, 5, and U.S. Rep. Beto O'Rourke, D-El Paso, during a town hall at the Historic Santa Fe Train Depot in Gainesville.(Jae S. Lee / Staff Photographer) 2 / 8U.S. Rep. Beto O'Rourke, D-El Paso, shakes hands with supporter Isaac Hoskins, who played live music at the Historic Santa Fe Train Depot in Gainesville on Saturday.(Jae S. Lee / Staff Photographer) 3 / 8A volunteer carried a cake during Saturday's town hall in Gainesville.(Jae S. Lee / Staff Photographer) 4 / 8U.S. Rep. Beto O'Rourke, D-El Paso, speaks to supporters during a town hall at the Historic Santa Fe Train Depot in Gainesville.(Jae S. Lee / Staff Photographer) 5 / 8A woman watches U.S. Rep. Beto O'Rourke through a window during a town hall at the Historic Santa Fe Train Depot in Gainesville.(Jae S. Lee / Staff Photographer) 6 / 8U.S. Rep. Beto O'Rourke, D-El Paso, waves to supporters during a town hall at the Historic Santa Fe Train Depot in Gainesville.(Jae S. Lee / Staff Photographer) 7 / 8Supporters hold up signs while Congressman Beto O'Rourke speaks during a town hall at the Historic Santa Fe Train Depot in Gainesville.(Jae S. Lee / Staff Photographer) 8 / 8Congressman Beto O'Rourke speaks to supporters during a town hall at the Historic Santa Fe Train Depot in Gainesville.(Jae S. Lee / Staff Photographer)

In a prepared statement touting his achievement Saturday, O'Rourke noted that Cruz boasted about stumping in each of Iowa's 99 counties during the 2016 presidential race, at the time saying he did it to "show the respect that I think any candidate who wants to compete in this state owes to the men and women of Iowa."

Cruz aides acknowledge that the incumbent can't say he's blanketed Texas’ much larger footprint, but they dismiss O’Rourke’s 254-county goal as little more than hype.

“Our campaign is based not on an arbitrary travel data point like our opponent's, but on a vision and message that we believe Texans desire and want to see from their leaders,” Cruz spokeswoman Catherine Frazier said. “We are confident and proud of the large swaths of the state that Cruz has visited in the last six years, listening to Texans from all backgrounds, and all walks of life.”

1 / 2People wait in line to meet Sen. Ted Cruz in San Antonio as he campaigns for re-election.(Tamir Kalifa / For The Washington Post) 2 / 2Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, speaks to Dee Dee Fein of Cherry Hill, N.J., on Capitol Hill. He delivered remarks during an event hosted by the Zionist Organization of America.(Zach Gibson / Getty Images)

Gimmick?

Texas candidates have used a variety of gimmicks to grab attention. Perhaps most famously, in his 1948 Senate bid, Lyndon B. Johnson, a congressman and future president, stumped across the state by helicopter — then a novel and risky mode of transport.

Victor Morales, a Democrat and high school teacher, earned national attention in 1996 when he ran for Senate on a dare and toured Texas in a white pickup.

Like O’Rourke, he says he visited each county. Morales credits the approach with helping him get as far as he did against incumbent Sen. Phil Gramm — 44 percent — but said he didn’t have enough money to help turn out more voters.

O’Rourke, whose campaign said he has logged up to 1,600 miles a week, is far better funded than Morales was. O'Rourke raised $13.2 million through the end of March, roughly half of what analysts say he needs. But he’s disavowed funding from political action committees, a source Cruz can easily tap into.

What's more, he's facing off against Cruz in a midterm election, and Republicans outvoted Democrats by about 500,000 in the March 6 primary.

“Is [O’Rourke] going to get them out? Who knows,” said Morales, who said he talks to voters about O’Rourke as often as he can. “But is there a shot? Of course.”

O’Rourke knows he needs every vote he can get, and he’s searching for them even in places where Cruz will no doubt wallop him in November.

That's what took him late last year to West Texas' Nolan County — which saw 73 percent of 4,857 ballots cast for Donald Trump in the 2016 election — to tour the Central Rolling Plains Co-Op & Cotton Gin.

In April, he convened a West Texas town hall small enough to be held around three cafe tables in Dickens County, where only 909 votes were cast in the '16 election, 83 percent for Trump.

Last month, he knocked on doors in rural Loving County, population 112, and met with owners of a food truck and a convenience store. Only 26 people cast votes in the March 6 Senate primary there, with 13 out of 15 GOP votes for Cruz and just two out of 11 Democratic votes for O'Rourke.

Democrat Heather Williams took her college-age kids and Republican parents to hear O’Rourke at Sidekicks restaurant in deeply red Rains County northeast of Dallas in January, an event she helped organize. She said she initially thought he had no chance of beating Cruz until she heard him speak at a Henderson County coffee meeting last year.

“I did a complete 180 once I met him and heard what he had to say," she said.

She conceded, however, that her folks are still unlikely to break with the GOP.

“Did [O’Rourke] change someone from red to blue? I doubt it,” she said of the Rains County meet and greet. But for Democrats like her, “he got people enthusiastic and believing.”

Crossover potential?

Brendan Steinhauser, a GOP strategist who ran Sen. John Cornyn’s 2014 re-election campaign, said that while visiting each county has “power” as a talking point, it’s not likely to result in significant crossover votes — or victory in November.

“History does not suggest that will happen,” Steinhauser said.

Elizabeth Simas, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Houston, said research shows that when people defect from their party, they’re typically drawn to the better-known candidate.

A May 30 Quinnipiac University poll showed that about half the voters surveyed didn't know enough about O'Rourke to form an opinion. And O'Rourke won just 62 percent in a three-way March 6 primary, suggesting that even among Democrats, he wasn't an overwhelming favorite.

The May poll also showed Cruz widening his lead after a Quinnipiac survey six weeks earlier showed O’Rourke in striking distance.

“Everybody loves this idea that Texas is going to turn blue. But it’s got to be purple before it’s blue,” Simas said.

‘Time well-spent’

Paul Sadler, a Democrat and former state lawmaker, said he also traversed each county in 2012 — the year he lost to Cruz. But he pointed to O’Rourke’s national profile and formidable fundraising as evidence he’s already come farther than Texas Democrats have in ages.

“He’s taken the effort to go out and shake hands with people in every county, and people don’t realize outside the state what a fundamentally difficult and time-consuming task that is,” Sadler said. “It’s educational and time well-spent.”

Even if it doesn’t confer front-runner status, Sadler and others interviewed for this report said it’s critical experience.

“Voters should expect incumbents to travel throughout the state extensively,” said former U.S. deputy energy secretary and Houston Mayor Bill White, a Democrat who lost his 2010 gubernatorial contest against Republican Rick Perry. “We need more candidates and even more elected officials who realize that, once they’re elected, they don’t just represent a party but all of Texas.”

O’Rourke said “it’s hard to quantify” whether his 254-county investment will pay off, though he noted crowds have grown as he's returned to many communities.

“It’s all of us doing everything we can,” he said. “And we also need a little bit of luck. No two ways about that.”