Beto O’Rourke turns to…Trump?

Beto O'Rourke, US Representative from El Paso, stopped in Midland on his campaign for US Senate, April 7, 2018, at the MLK Center. James Durbin/Reporter-Telegram Beto O'Rourke, US Representative from El Paso, stopped in Midland on his campaign for US Senate, April 7, 2018, at the MLK Center. James Durbin/Reporter-Telegram Photo: James Durbin / James Durbin Photo: James Durbin / James Durbin Image 1 of / 8 Caption Close Beto O’Rourke turns to…Trump? 1 / 8 Back to Gallery

On a college campus, at a meeting hall packed with legions of liberal Democrats whipped up into a frenzy about calls for universal health care and an end to college debt, Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Beto O’Rourke got more than 1,000 of his faithful supporters to cheer the name “Donald J. Trump.”

Never mind that Trump is sporting an approval rating in the single-digits among Democratic voters.

The Democrat, whom U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz is trying to paint as a liberal backed by Hollywood elites, turned Trump into an applause line at Texas Tech University. O’Rourke — as he did in more than a dozen other speaking engagements from Houston to Midland over the last several weeks — talked about Trump signing a bill that included a provision O’Rourke had nurtured and helped turn into law.

But while O’Rourke was using Trump to highlight a legislative success, he also was ringing a bell on the core of the strategy he’ll be employing to go after Cruz, who has a reputation of struggling to get along with both Republicans and Democrats in Congress. In trying to avoid the traditional “liberal” tag Democrats in Texas have often found themselves struggling to keep of them, O’Rourke is out to prove he’s better able to work with all sides in Washington — even other Republicans — than Cruz.

MONEY RACE: Ted Cruz fundraising in early 2018 lags behind Beto O'Rourke's

“Not only can he not work with Democrats to get things accomplished for Texas, he cannot work with Republicans to get things accomplished for Texas,” O’Rourke explained to a radio audience in West Texas last week.

In many ways, O’Rourke is like the hitter in baseball who takes what the pitcher is giving him to hit, rather than waiting for the perfect pitch. South Carolina Sen. Lindsay Graham in this case has already given O’Rourke the foundation of which to make his argument.

“If you killed Ted Cruz on the floor of the Senate, and the trial was in the Senate, nobody would convict you,” Graham said in 2016 at the Washington Press Club Foundation's 72nd Congressional Dinner, referencing the Texas senator's unpopular reputation on Capitol Hill.

Trump, too, helped broaden that perception during the 2016 race.

“He's a nasty guy,” Trump said of Cruz in early 2016. “Nobody likes him. Nobody in Congress likes him. Nobody likes him anywhere once they get to know him."

Cruz himself has a complicated relationship with Trump. Last week, he penned a piece for Time magazine that praises Trump’s tenure in office.

“President Trump is doing what he was elected to do: disrupt the status quo,” Cruz wrote.

Never mind that Cruz in 2016 called Trump a “pathological liar,” “utterly amoral,” and “a narcissist at a level I don't think this country’s ever seen.”

Cruz’s friction with Trump and with many other Republicans has become a part of O’Rourke’s campaign toolbox as he travels through some of the most Republicans territory in Texas, if not the nation, trying to dislodge traditional Republican voters from Cruz. And he’s using Trump as a key exhibit to help make his case.

By signing the omnibus spending bill he had first threatened to veto, Trump may have handed O’Rourke his biggest legislative victory to date. And it boosts O’Rourke’s efforts to define himself as someone who can find common ground with Republicans and Democrats. That’s a skill set Cruz doesn’t have, but he touts it as proof of his independence.

During Cruz’s kickoff rally at the Redneck Country Club outside of Houston, Cruz had conservative radio host Michael Berry lead the event by reminding the crowd of how Cruz shut down the government and made enemies with Sen. John McCain and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

“He did not make friends with his fellow senators,” Berry said. “He went there to represent you.”

Moments later, Cruz held it up as evidence of his being independent of the dysfunction of Washington.

“Texas is strong and independent,” Cruz said leading up to is campaign motto. “Texas is Tough.”

Beto’s gamble

But O’Rourke’s gamble is whether voters in an era in which Texans are frustrated by both parties, will agree that true toughness means working with the other party despite the dysfunction.

The O’Rourke legislation that Trump turned into law aims to help members of the military who leave the service with less than honorable discharges. O’Rourke said those soldiers are coming out often with mental health needs that the government won’t help with even though the issues came up while they were serving the nation. Currently VA mental health services are not offered to soldiers with “bad paper discharges.” O’Rourke said the bill doesn’t cover dishonorably discharged soldiers.

The vast majority of the 180,000 discharges annually are honorable or administrative discharges. But O’Rourke said the concern is that the less-than-honorably discharged veterans face an increased likelihood of mental health issues and a much higher suicide rate than other former soldiers.

Last year, a federal report showed 62 percent of military personnel discharged for misconduct from 2011 through 2015 had been diagnosed with mental health illnesses that could have caused the behavior that led to their less-than-honorable discharges.

It’s an issue that might show O’Rourke’s political savvy. While there are fewer than 20,000 or so bad paper discharges nationwide, the issue impacts a wide audience in Texas because it has nearly twice as many members of the U.S. Army stationed in it than any other state. Texas has the most U.S. Air Force members as well. In all, the state has more than 118,000 active duty soldiers, many of whom will remain in Texas after their service ends.

TAKING ON DEMS: O'Rourke says Pelosi, Schumer don't understand Texas

O’Rourke tells audiences that he had to work with Republicans and find compromise. He said there are so many spots in the legislative process a bill can die, especially when you are a Democrat in a Congress dominated by Republicans. But he said with Republican help, the measure made it through Congress.

“It came to Donald J. Trump’s desk and he signed it into law,” O’Rourke said at a town hall meeting in San Saba County, where Trump won 86 percent of the vote over Hillary Clinton in 2016. “Now we are expanding mental health care now and saving the lives of veterans. I want that to be the Texas way.”

Even if a blue wave election is brewing, as Democrats hope, Texas provides big challenges. Texas is still a solidly Republican state, with no Democrat winning a U.S. Senate race since Democrat Lloyd Bentsen won his last term in office in 1988.

O’Rourke, without traditional political consultants on his staff, says it has left him adapting as he goes along trying to break the Democrats’ losing streak. He said his solution is going into places that have been voting Republican and showing them where he can fight for them. At the same time, he knows he can’t risk losing the traditional base of Democratic supporters who demand adherence to more liberal policies.

O’Rourke’s tightrope can be seen on gun control. He can fire up Democratic crowds with his support for an assault weapons ban. But then he sounds like many Republicans in declaring the need to defend the 2nd Amendment of the Constitution and celebrating the states “proud heritage of gun ownership.”

“I don't want the government to take your AR-15,” O’Rourke says on one hand in San Saba. “I just don't think that these weapons, which are designed to kill people, should continue to be sold to civilians in this country."

‘Liberal man’

Despite O’Rourke mapping out a new playbook, Cruz is falling back on the traditional GOP playbook in trying to counter O’Rourke’s early success. Cruz pounced when O’Rourke was seen at a private fundraiser that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer also attended. And Cruz relished it when U.S. Rep. Joe Kennedy III was in Houston with O’Rourke at another event.

Cruz has already called O’Rourke a “liberal man” in a video jabbing at the El Paso Democrat. And then on Twitter he teased that O’Rourke was a “lock to win a Senate seat in Massachusetts.”

O’Rourke, meanwhile, is gambling that those jabs have a lot less sting as he meets and talks to Republican and independent voters in places like Glasscock County — where 92 percent of the voters backed Donald Trump. In Houston, he spent time talking about how nice U.S. Rep. Ted Poe, a conservative, has been to him over the years, as well as touting U.S. Rep. Gene Green, a liberal Democrat. It’s that ability to get along with people and find common ground that O’Rourke considers a true Texas tradition — not angering both sides.

On one national cable show, O’Rourke said he knows he frustrated the anchor who kept trying to take shot at Ted Cruz. O’Rourke said he wants to beat Cruz, but said making the race about Cruz is not going to get him elected.

“I could care less if you are a Republican or a Democrat,” O’Rourke said in McCullough County at a rally with a few dozen people, many who acknowledged they voted in the Republican Party primary in March instead.

“We’re not against anyone.”

jeremy.wallace@chron.com