WASHINGTON - Abby Tannenbaum has never been to Texas. But that hasn’t stopped the 23-year-old digital strategist from Florida from sending $2 a month for the past year to help fuel the campaign of El Paso Congressman Beto O’Rourke, the Democratic challenger to Republican U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz.

“Anybody who’s running against Ted Cruz,” she said at a recent “Beers with Beto” fundraiser near the U.S. Capitol — a standing-room only event populated largely by the capital city’s burgeoning class of young professionals. “He’s scarier than Donald Trump.”

Frank McGrath, a 57-year-old pizza shop owner in Southern California, has never been to Texas either. But he chips in $25 a month to Cruz, for a running total so far of more than $780.

“I have XM (satellite) radio, and I listen to Mark Levin and Patriot Radio,” he said. “I remember Mark Levin saying Ted Cruz is a guy we need for our country and in our Senate.”

Neither can cast a vote for O’Rourke or Cruz, but they are contributing to a mountain of cash coming from all corners of the nation to a contest that has become a proxy for an ideological divide that’s even bigger than Texas.

Cruz, who established a national fundraising base in his 2016 White House bid, has relied on out-of-state contributors for some $2.5 million — or nearly half of the $5.1 million in itemized personal contributions to his re-election campaign as of the end of March.

O’Rourke, who has become something of a cause célèbre among Democrats nationally, saw nearly $2.3 million in out-of-state contributions — a little less than a third of his total $7.7 million cash haul for the same period, according to a Chronicle review of federal campaign reports.

The Chronicle analysis counts only contributions of $200 or more, which must be reported to the Federal Election Commission. But they provide a window into the flow of campaign cash from individual contributors, as opposed to spending by independent groups and political action committees.

The cash flow makes clear that O’Rourke’s longshot quest to unseat Cruz, whatever the outcome, has become a national contest of partisan passions drawing media and rooting interest from coast to coast.

Both campaigns have sought to emphasize their Texas grassroots support.

“There’s an energy buzzing in Texas, and that energy is contagious elsewhere,” said O’Rourke spokesman Chris Evans, noting that 70 percent of O’Rourke’s campaign’s cash still comes from Texans.

Cruz has been outraised by O’Rourke even as he benefits from a larger outpouring of out-state money, something his campaign attributes to his status as an icon of the political right.

“Ted Cruz has been a national leader of the conservative movement since he was elected in 2012, and his national profile exploded when he ran for president,” said Cruz spokeswoman Emily Miller. “Americans from all parts of the country look to Senator Cruz to be a voice for their values and priorities in Washington, so they support his campaign for re-election.”

The national attention has boosted both campaigns in different ways.

Cruz’s national profile works for O’Rourke, too

While the nonpartisan Cook Political Report rates at least 10 other Senate races as more competitive in November, the O’Rourke-Cruz matchup has received marquee treatment in the national media, with major profiles in publications from the New York Times to the Washington Post and Politico.

Much of the coverage has focused on O’Rourke’s underdog gambit to turn Texas “blue.” But political analysts attribute the buzz to Cruz as much as to O’Rourke, who until recently had very little name ID in Texas, much less across the nation.

“Ted Cruz is a high-profile target,” said North Carolina pollster and media consultant Rick Shaftan, who ran the pro-Cruz SuperPAC “Courageous Conservatives” during the 2016 presidential election. “If you’re running against (freshman Republican incumbent) Cindy Hyde-Smith in Mississippi, who’s she?”

Cruz’s status as a pariah of the left clearly fueled the interest of Toby Mues, a 30-year-old video editor who showed up at O’Rourke’s D.C. fundraiser in his Washington Capitals hockey jersey. “Ted Cruz is the worst senator of all time,” he said. “Clearly in the Top 10.”

Activists on both sides also know that in the Senate, with its 51-49 GOP majority, every race counts. And politics, once dominated by parochial concerns, has become increasingly nationalized in the age of Twitter and Facebook, where O’Rourke is a constant presence.

There’s little argument that O’Rourke’s steady stream of Facebook Live campaign events, combined with a Kennedyesque aura of youth and vitality, has helped to quickly establish a national profile. Several of O’Rourke’s Washington donors, including Tannenbaum, say they first heard about him during his 2017 cross-country road trip with Texas Republican U.S. Rep. Will Hurd, an act of bipartisan comity that went viral on social media.

If O’Rourke’s fans see him as a fresh new face, longtime Cruz supporters tend to see his challenge as a cookie-cutter projection of the political left’s hopes for Texas. “He’s just a stand-in for the opposition to Ted Cruz,” said Beau Correll, a Virginia lawyer who backed Cruz’s Republican primary campaign against Trump.

Indeed, conversations with O’Rourke partisans often begin with Cruz.

Cristina Rayas, a community organizer who attended O’Rourke’s Washington fundraiser with Mues, would see Cruz as a pretty big political trophy if he were to lose in deep red Texas. “He’s impacting the national conversation,” she said of Cruz.

Taking on Jimmy Kimmel, and the rest of Hollywood

Cruz’s profile as a stalwart of the right mobilizes conservative donors as well.

“Ted has a strong conservative following and we’re giving him money from all over the country,” said Kay Godwin, a retired dental hygienist and conservative activist who served as Cruz’s Georgia grassroots director in 2016. “We love him standing up for what conservative people believe in, because that’s the only avenue we have to carry our message to Washington.”

Godwin also blames the national media for helping build up O’Rourke, who is the rare challenger who leads an established incumbent in fundraising, even as he trails in the polls.

“The media would love to do whatever they can to bring Ted down,” Godwin said, echoing a charge of bias that Cruz — along with President Donald Trump — often makes on the campaign trail.

Cruz also has sought to portray O’Rourke as the Chosen One of Hollywood celebrities and liberal elites, a dynamic that he dramatized in his recent one-on-one basketball face-off with late-night talk show host and critic Jimmy Kimmel.

A check of O’Rourke’s contributors includes boldface names like talk show host Chelsea Handler and actor Tate Donovan, who have contributed more than $2,500 each. So has Laurene Powell Jobs, the widow of Apple founder Steve Jobs. O’Rourke, who plays bass guitar, even jammed with Willie Nelson at Willie’s annual 4th of July Picnic in Austin.

But according to O’Rourke, who told his DC supporters “you can do the right thing and win,” his campaign’s average online donation is $25. As he often does, he also reminded the young audience that he doesn’t take money from PACs.

O’Rourke’s campaign sees all the national attention as a sign of two unique aspects of the race: It’s unlikely play for rural, conservative parts of the state where Democrats don’t often compete; and the Democrats’ long history of futility in Texas.

“It’s hard to ignore that if you’re a reporter covering politics nationally,” Evans said. “Everything you’ve been told about campaigns is being thrown out the window in Texas, and it’s working.”

kevin.diaz@chron.com , Twitter.com/DiazChron

alejandra.matos@chron.com, Twitter.com/amatos12