Win while losing? Beto O'Rourke, Stacey Abrams, Andrew Gillum may still be rising voices

Susan Page | USA TODAY

Show Caption Hide Caption Stacey Abrams files suit, delays Georgia election certificate date Democrat Stacey Abrams has vowed not to concede to Republican Brian Kemp and plans to file a federal class-action lawsuit to push back the date of certification until every ballot has been logged.

WASHINGTON – Can candidates win while losing?

Some of the Democratic stars of the midterms did not prevail in their elections. Beto O'Rourke returned to Washington on Tuesday not as the senator-elect from Texas but as the retiring congressman from El Paso. Andrew Gillum officially lost his bid to be Florida governor after a recount. And Stacey Abrams had hoped to force a runoff with Secretary of State Brian Kemp in the Georgia governor's race but conceded on Friday,

Traditionally, a campaign is a zero-sum game. One person wins, the other loses. But in an age of social media, at a time of hunger for authentic voices and amid a wide-open debate about the future message and messengers of the Democratic Party, it's possible that even a losing candidate could emerge as a rising voice.

Consider this: The Polk County Democratic Party in Iowa issued an open invitation last week to O'Rourke to visit the biggest county in the state that just happens to hold the opening presidential caucuses.

"People wanted us to start inviting him in September," says Polk County Democratic chairman Sean Bagniewski. "We started seeing Beto stickers in Iowa; we're seeing yard signs for Beto in Iowa." Could he be a credible presidential contender for 2020? "Absolutely," he says.

"It worked for Abraham Lincoln," political scientist Darrell West of the Brookings Institution says with a smile. Lincoln was elected to a single House term from Illinois in 1846 and then lost a bid for the Senate in 1858, but he still managed to win the presidency in 1860. Among this year's candidates, win or lose, "some of these individuals certainly made a name for themselves, developed a national following and have a large fundraising base," West notes. O'Rourke in particular "could actually end up being very well-positioned for a presidential race."

To be sure, not everyone agrees with that. O'Rourke is a three-term House member from the northwest corner of Texas, not well known even within the state when he decided to challenge Republican Sen. Ted Cruz. O'Rourke has never won statewide office or been the chief sponsor of significant legislation that became law. In January, he'll be out of work.

Yet by Election Day, after following a strategy that eschewed much of the conventional wisdom about how to run a campaign, O'Rourke managed to raise a record-breaking $70 million from more than 800,000 individuals and to finish within 2.6 percentage points of Cruz. That's the closest any Democratic candidate has come to winning statewide office in Texas in nearly a quarter-century.

The energy around his candidacy is credited with helping Democrats down the Texas ballot flip two Republican-held House seats and more than dozen seats in the state Legislature.

Not only in horseshoes

Close counts only in horseshoes, the adage goes. (Even in horseshoes, ringers count more.) For candidates who brave long-shot races, though, near-misses can also help launch political careers.

One reason Abrams, Gillum and O'Rourke have generated so much buzz is that they didn't start out as likely winners. Indeed, the conventional wisdom at the start saw them as sure losers. Texas and Georgia have been reliably red states, for one thing, resistant to electing Democrats to statewide office.

Florida is a swing state, but Gillum wasn't favored in the five-way Democratic primary last August. Congresswoman Gwen Graham was better known, with a famous last name: Her father, Bob Graham, is a beloved figure who had served as governor and senator. Businessman Jeff Greene had more money, much of it tapped from his own fortune. Philip Levine was the former mayor of Miami Beach, a more muscular political base than Gillum's post as mayor of Tallahassee.

Gillum and Abrams also were trying to break new ground in racial and gender politics, which can be a perilous endeavor. When he won the Florida primary, Gillum became the first African-American nominated for governor by a major party in the history of the state. When she won the Georgia primary, Abrams became the first African-American woman to be a major party's nominee for governor in the history of the nation.

All three of them ran campaigns that rejected the traditional prescription of edging to the center to appeal to moderates in the middle. They tried to persuade new, progressive voters to go to the polls rather than simply court more reliable and centrist ones. Comparing them with the past two Democratic presidents, they followed more in the mold of Barack Obama in 2008 than Bill Clinton in 1992. They targeted the rising elements of the American electorate: millennials, blacks, Hispanics, women.

That paid off in turnout. Exit polls of voters sponsored by CNN and other media organizations reported that turnout among nonwhites hit records for a midterm election in all three states: 34 percent in Florida, 40 percent in Georgia, 41 percent in Texas. Those voters overwhelmingly backed the Democratic candidates over their Republican opponents – Ron DeSantis in Florida, Brian Kemp in Georgia and Cruz in Texas. Abrams and O'Rourke both won among voters who were casting a ballot for the first time in a midterm election by 7 percentage points; Gillum carried that group by a yawning 16 points.

And they didn't flinch at being labeled liberals.

Beto O'Rourke to supporters: 'I'm so f---ing proud of you guys' Beto O'Rourke dropped the f-bomb during his emotional concession speech after losing to Senator Ted Cruz.

Gillum was endorsed by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, backed a Medicare-for-all health care system and proposed raising the corporate tax rate to fund education programs. Abrams emphasized her pragmatism but also made it clear she supported gun control, gay rights and access to abortion. Tackling a hot-button issue that some Southern politicians have skirted, she called for the giant relief carving of Confederate figures on the state's Stone Mountain to be removed.

O'Rourke refused to accept contributions from political action committees and declined to hire a pollster or to employ high-priced consultants. He visited all 254 counties in Texas, including those where Democrats are scarce, and he tracked on Facebook everything from meeting with voters to doing his laundry.

At a Houston town hall in August, he was asked whether the decision by NFL players to kneel during the national anthem was disrespectful to veterans. "My short answer is no, I don't think it's disrespectful," he began, then earnestly discussed the history of the civil rights movement in America. There is "nothing more American than to peacefully stand up, or take a knee, for your rights, anytime, anywhere, or any place," he said.

Cruz seized the response for an emotional TV attack ad that aired in Texas, where most voters disagreed with O'Rourke on the issue. Across the country, though, the video of the exchange went viral, viewed tens of millions of times and fueling his status as a politician to watch.

Young enough to run again

There's one more factor that has boosted speculation about the futures of Abrams, Gillum and O'Rourke: their ages. Abrams is 44 years old. Gillum is 39. O'Rourke is 46. That gives them time to run again down the road.

The power of Facebook and Twitter also may make it less critical to hold the platform of an elective office, argues Nina Turner, president of the progressive group Our Revolution. "You can still have a big megaphone in the 21st century because of social media," she says. "Anybody can be a rising star."

Abrams should consider challenging Republican Sen. David Perdue for re-election in 2020, says Donna Brazile, who ran Al Gore's presidential bid in 2000 and has led the Democratic National Committee. "She's got the infrastructure ready," Brazile says. Abrams spokeswoman Priyanka Mantha demurs it's too early to consider that, or another else. "The job she is currently vying for is governor of Georgia, and that is what we're focused on now," she says.

Brazile suggests O'Rourke could be a possible leader at the DNC, a perch that would give him a day job and political prominence. Jim Henson, director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas, says O'Rourke would be well-positioned to challenge Republican Sen. John Cornyn in two years. O'Rourke aides said they doubt he'd be interested in the Senate race.

"The loss is bitter," O'Rourke said in a long email to supporters, saying he wanted to "be part of the best way forward for this country." He closed: "See you down the road."

Down the road, there's another race in 2020 that may hold more appeal.

For the White House.

In a POLITICO/Morning Consult poll in the days immediately after the election, former Vice President Joe Biden had the most support from Democrats as a potential presidential nominee in 2020, at 26 percent. Bernie Sanders, who made a surprisingly strong bid for the nomination last time around, was second, at 19 percent.

Beto O'Rourke was third, in single digits but ahead of such prospects as Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, California Sen. Kamala Harris and New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker.

When House Democrats met on Wednesday for the first time since the election, there were rounds of applause for three representatives who had won governorships, in Colorado, Minnesota and New Mexico. Applause for two who won Senate seats, in Arizona and Nevada. Applause for a congressman who won another statewide race, as attorney general of Minnesota.

And applause for Beto O'Rourke, who lost. Technically.

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