Single-party rule over a sustained period of time is a risky circumstance at best. Unchecked, it breeds an unhealthy sense of self-confidence among officials. It always seems to lead those in power to lose touch with the people and drive, instead, toward pushing bad government on good people.

It makes no difference if the ruling party is right wing or left wing. The result of one group being in charge too long is never good.

That’s the beauty of the American system. Those who assume their power is safe and act like it will eventually find themselves jerked back to reality by a sudden and unexpected electoral hook.

Which brings us to Beto O’Rourke and the Texas Republican Party.

O’Rourke’s emergence in 2018 as a serious Democratic challenger to incumbent Republican Sen. Ted Cruz helped shake Texas out of the belief that one party was guaranteed to win elections.

O’Rourke didn’t win his race, of course. And, no, Texas government didn’t change hands. The state remains devoted to conservative governance.

But O’Rourke came close enough to winning and his place atop the ballot had the effect of breaking a single party’s grip on power just enough to perhaps save the GOP from its own excesses and to give all of us space for serious debate about how Texas should be governed.

The race also appears to have sobered Cruz about his standing and what is expected of him as our senator. Texas wants a representative who is in Washington for us, not someone who will just use the office as a stepping stone. Since his narrow victory, Cruz speaks, acts and even looks different. That’s all for the better.

For his part, O’Rourke has become a star of the left. Cooler heads recognize that his stardom is premature, and O’Rourke himself would admit it is, as yet, unearned.

It is not because of his growing status around the country but because of the way his candidacy helped shift Texas’ political course that O’Rourke earns our recognition as a finalist for Texan of the Year.

The signals were there in 2017 that O’Rourke could be a different kind of Democratic candidate. He smartly built some name recognition and goodwill by road-tripping with one of the state’s brightest congressional representatives, Republican Will Hurd.

The buddy movie they streamed on social media was a bit of salve on the partisan rancor that’s burning this country up.

O’Rourke either sensed then or already understood that was what the state, and the broader country, would respond to.

The candidacy he built around themes of cooperation, comity and bipartisanship suggested to us a better politics, and a better America, than what we have come to.

In an age of endless partisan war and the exhaustion of social media sniping, O’Rourke was able to convince many of us there was another way.

It came at a time when too many leaders in the Texas Republican Party had decided that listening to a broader constituency didn’t matter. All that mattered was satisfying primary voters who pushed the party ever further to the right. Substantive governance was put at risk in the name of socially divisive campaigns aimed at stirring the culture wars.

From Houston to Dallas, voters said enough. Two veteran GOP congressmen were turned out in favor of Democrats, including Pete Sessions, who lost his long-held North Dallas seat to newcomer Colin Allred.

In the state Legislature, culture warriors like state Sens. Don Huffines and Konni Burton were washed out in favor of Democrats who staked the ceded centrist ground.

Republicans who held onto their seats in the suburbs appear wide-eyed now, suddenly aware that clustering in a far-right bubble is not the way to remain in government in an evermore urban Texas. State Rep. Jeff Leach, of Plano, has left the Freedom Caucus and is promising that this legislative session will be about books not bathrooms, a reference to putting the important issue of school funding over the ugly distraction of dictating who uses what facility.

You might call this the Beto effect. One could argue that President Donald Trump’s caustic rhetoric and ongoing investigation troubles were more important in shifting the game. But that’s just not realistic. Absent O’Rourke’s tireless campaigning that drew not only Democrats but moderate Republicans to the polls, Democrats would feel lonelier in the Lone Star State than they do today.

O’Rourke is now on the short list as a contender for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020. His resume is thin for the job, but there is plenty about his appeal in Texas that will shine on a larger stage. He will be forced, however, to show more of his hand about his true political beliefs than he ever was in the Senate race. His future in the party and as an American leader will be determined by electoral outcomes too far in the future to predict.

But in 2018, at least, O’Rourke was a force for change. Anytime monopoly rule is shaken, that’s to the good.

What's your view?