A large bulldog mascot and a scoreboard showing the numbers “20-20” overlooked a crowd of more than 500 as Beto O’Rourke entered the H.E. McCracken Middle School gym Friday evening.

The Democratic presidential candidate wasn’t there for a basketball game, but rather a rally to reach out to Lowcountry voters ahead of next year’s first-in-the-South primary in South Carolina. With his shirt sleeves rolled up, O’Rourke acknowledged the crowd with several fist pumps.

O’Rourke, a former Texas congressman who lost in his bid to unseat Sen. Ted Cruz last year, discussed his views on immigration, speaking in Spanish at times while explaining the importance of maintaining security without building a wall on the nation’s southern border.

“If we want security, you will not purchase it with a $30 billion, 30-foot-high, 2,000-mile wall,” he said, describing a border wall President Donald Trump has pushed for since the 2016 campaign. “You can do so by treating people with respect and dignity. We are less safe when we fear one another.”

O’Rourke said Trump seeks to secure his political power by keeping people apart, angry and afraid of one another.

“He’s trying to keep us scared of Mexican immigrants or Muslims whose travel to the United States he sought to ban, or by calling Nazis and white supremacists and klansmen very fine people,” O’Rourke said.

“What he’s trying to do is to keep us divided and apart. I think he understands politics and what motivates us in a democracy. If we can come together as a country at this very highly divided, highly polarized, hyperpartisan moment, there’s nothing, absolutely nothing, that can stop us.”

O’Rourke advocated for public education reform, explaining the need to pay teachers a living wage and improve retirement programs in states like South Carolina and Texas.

“I thought it was bad in Texas, where nearly 50 percent of our educators are working a second or third job to make ends meet. ... But when I listen to educators here in your state, I learned that one quarter of your teachers drop out of the profession in their first year,” he said.

“Everything invested in that teacher’s education, including the grants, scholarships provided to them, they get to the classroom finally able to answer that calling, and within a year they are gone.”

Taking questions from the audience, O’Rourke heard from a 26-year-old man who said he had never registered to vote and asked why it was important.

“Democracy is important and you all proved that with Joe Cunningham,” O'Rourke said, referring to the Democratic congressman elected to represent the 1st District last fall. “Before I came to South Carolina on our first visit a couple weeks ago, Joe was one of the first calls I made. He’s working hard for you all every day.

“Joe said if I become president I would work with him to make sure there is no offshore drilling in the state. This huge turnout shows that your priority is protecting your coast.”

Bill Gorski stood out in the crowd of supporters, standing over 6 feet tall and wearing a black O’Rourke t-shirt. He traveled from Savannah to attend his first political rally.

“I loved his campaigns, even from Georgia, I was following every second of it,” he said. “I sprinted out of work to get here. I couldn’t miss an in-person thing. I can’t wait to see what happens going forward.”

Gorski said he looks for conviction from a candidate.

“I’m not a hardliner on policy,” he said. “It’s conviction to what you want and I’ve seen nothing but that from Beto. The day he announced, I signed up to volunteer. It’s great and it’s exciting.”

Bluffton natives Anne Cooke and Jacob Martin said they came out to see O’Rourke because they like his stance on immigration.

“I like his policies,” Cooke said. “The one thing that I liked was when he said ‘tear the wall down,’ and I like his stance on health care.”