Lindsey Anderson

El Paso Times

EL PASO, Texas — Democratic Rep. Beto O’Rourke has officially launched what political experts call an uphill battle to unseat Sen. Ted Cruz in 2018.

After months of signaling an interest in the Senate seat, O’Rourke publicly announced his campaign Friday morning during an event in El Paso. The announcement marked the culmination of a months-long tour across Texas that O'Rourke said helped in his decision to seek the statewide office.

“Everywhere I went, it really didn’t matter if it was traditionally thought of as a blue part of the state or a red part of the state, people want something better for their families and for this state,” O’Rourke told the El Paso Times ahead of his public announcement. “They want to get behind somebody who can deliver on that. I’ve just been very encouraged … by people from all over this state to run and take this on, this opportunity to do better for Texas.”

The announcement kicks off what will be a nearly two-year, high-profile fight in Republican-dominated Texas against one of the most prominent GOP senators in the country.

Cruz was elected to the Senate in 2013 and last year campaigned against Donald Trump for the Republican presidential nomination. Democrats are hoping that his Senate seat will be vulnerable in the midterm election year that will serve as a barometer of the electorate's feelings on the Trump administration.

But political observers said any potential vulnerability for Cruz may not be enough to boost O'Rourke to victory in Texas, which has not elected a Democrat to statewide office for more than two decades — a drought lasting longer than in any other state in the country.

O'Rourke, 44, is a former El Paso City Council member and a small-business owner now in his third term in the House. He preaches government accessibility and accountability and is known for his social media savvy. He has committed to not accepting money from political action committees and said he would self-impose a two-term limit if elected to the Senate.

O'Rourke said he recognizes the challenges ahead but believes Texas voters may sway Democrat for the right candidate, particularly one who is willing to work in a bipartisan manner.

“If we didn’t think we could win, I wouldn’t do it,” O’Rourke said. “We’ve had someone who’s been focused on running for president, on party over country, on shutting down the government to make a point. That’s plain and good for our junior senator’s career. It’s not been great for Texas.”

Representatives for Cruz, 46, didn’t return multiple requests for comment.

Long odds for victory

O'Rourke is the only candidate who has officially announced his bid for the U.S. Senate seat currently occupied by Cruz. Democratic Rep. Joaquin Castro said he is weighing the possibility of a Senate run, and political analyst Matthew Dowd has floated an independent campaign for the seat.

Even if O'Rourke were to win the Democratic primary, the numbers are bleak for Democrats in Texas, according to several political analysts interviewed by the El Paso Times.

Not only does Texas have more Republican voters than Democratic voters, but non-presidential election years, like 2018, also tend to see lower voter turnout among Democrats. Name recognition and fundraising will also be major hurdles for O’Rourke, a congressman little known outside of El Paso, political experts said.

“For O’Rourke to have even a glimmer of hope in 2018 or 2020, the Trump presidency would have to literally implode, thereby adversely affecting Republicans on the ballot from coast to coast,” said Mark Jones, a political science professor at Rice University in Houston.

O’Rourke would need to raise at least $20 million to run a viable race, Jones said. But drawing big national donors to the Texas campaign could be difficult, because many contributors will be focused on ensuring Senate Democrats up for re-election in red states are able to keep their seats next year, experts said.

Yet Democrats have hope. They point to Trump’s 38% approval rating and an outpouring of political activism in response to the new president, from the Women’s March to rallies against Trump’s ban on travelers from some Muslim-majority countries.

“When you start seeing the stilts that the house are built on looking weak, it’s a time to take action,” said Austin-based Democratic political consultant James Aldrete. “You cannot not notice the changing currents.”

And some Democratic strategists argue O'Rourke's charisma could give him an edge. A recent Washington Post profile described the congressman as "a Gen Xer who speaks fluent Spanish and looks more like a Kennedy than the Kennedys do."

The tide may be turning in favor of a candidate like O'Rourke, said John Lapp, a Democratic strategist out of Washington, D.C., who has worked on congressional and gubernatorial campaigns.

“I think you have to throw out the old political map, the old political calculation and realize that people are hungering for somebody who’s authentic,” Lapp said. “That’s what makes this time different, this election different.”

Republican political consultant Ray Sullivan, who worked on the presidential campaigns of George W. Bush and Rick Perry, scoffed when asked whether 2018 was the year Texas would vote blue.

“Every year since 1994 has been the year that Democrats were going to take back the state and win a statewide election, and it never happens,” Sullivan said. “And it’s not going to happen in 2018 either.”

Trump won Texas by a smaller margin than did Mitt Romney in 2012, and Democrats saw gains last year in historically conservative suburbs around Houston, Dallas and Austin. But Jim Henson, who heads the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin, said believing a statewide win for Democrats is possible next year may be too optimistic, despite some slow progress the party has made.

Henson said any talk that Cruz’s gaffes during the presidential campaign weakened him in Texas is folly. Polling numbers show the senator continues to have the support of two-thirds of Republicans in the state, Henson said.

“His approval numbers are poor among Democrats, but that doesn’t matter very much,” he added.

Still, Henson said O’Rourke only stands to gain from announcing his candidacy now, even though Election Day is 20 months away. Texas Democrats are at a disadvantage if they wait to jump into a race until later in the game, giving them less time to boost their name recognition and raise funds, he said.

Campaigning is already underway for O'Rourke. After the El Paso event, he is flying to Dallas to meet with Democrats.

An underdog again

O’Rourke said it’s too soon to see how the Trump presidency will affect his Senate race. But he said he heard from constituents a desire for checks on presidential power from Texans who voted for Trump and those who didn’t.

“They want government to work, and it’s clear right now that it’s not working,” he said. “It’s not responding to their needs.”

He said he's no stranger to being the underdog, and embraces the challenge.

In 2012, O'Rourke ran against eight-term Rep. Silvestre Reyes in the Democratic primary. Reyes had served as the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and had the backing of President Obama and former president Bill Clinton. O’Rourke, who had the help of an anti-incumbent super PAC, squeaked by with 50.5% of the vote in the primary.

O'Rourke likened his Senate campaign to the 1949 Bowie High School baseball team, a group of ragtag students from the barrio who won the first state championship against all odds.

“There’s a lot of grit in our community,” O’Rourke said, clearing his throat. “Sorry, I get kind of choked up thinking about that story.”

“We’re a community that produces winners against long odds,” he continued. “I think that’s what we’re going to do here.”

He taps into that underdog sense when making his pitch for why Texans should vote for him. He talks about the importance of serving those who feel ignored by government — people struggling to find jobs, veterans who have lived with substandard health care and border communities — and of being accountable and accessible to constituents, not to corporate donors.

Texas has "gone from the top job creator in the country to the middle of the pack, and we’ve been overly dependent on the boom and bust cycle of energy," O'Rourke said. "There are people in Texas who have been left behind or left out and forgotten.”

'Anything else is failure'

Even if O’Rourke loses the race, experts said the campaign could propel him into the governorship, the Senate or a presidential Cabinet position years down the road.

“If he’s able to do well with the playing field stacked against him, that could help catapult his political career nationally,” Jones said.

O’Rourke said he’s not focused on future political possibilities ahead.

He said he decided to run against Cruz after talking with his wife, Amy, about the world in which they want to raise their kids, and “whether we can hope and wait for someone else or some other year.”

The couple have three children: Ulysses, 10; Molly, 8; and Henry, 6.

“I want to make sure when we look back on this year and this time that we have a really good answer for them when they say, 'Hey Dad, in 2017, when all this was going on, when we really needed leadership what were you doing?'” O’Rourke said.

Politicos may consider O’Rourke’s bid a success simply if he narrows the gap between Republican and Democratic votes, but O’Rourke said only a win will be a victory.

“You cannot deliver for the people of this state through a good showing in an election that’s short a victory,” he said. “We’ll be absolutely 100% focused on winning and on delivering for Texas. Anything else is a failure.”