Texas primary results show challenges Beto O'Rourke must overcome in race against Ted Cruz

AUSTIN — U.S. Rep. Beto O'Rourke has his work cut out for him.

The Democrat from El Paso is running to unseat U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, a former Republican presidential candidate, in a state that hasn't elected a Democrat to statewide office since 1994. Despite Cruz not having a formidable GOP opponent and a surge in Democrats at the polls in the March primaries, Republican voters cast 500,000 more ballots.

Political experts say that means O'Rourke will have to work harder to increase his name recognition, persuade some moderate Republicans to choose him over Cruz and inspire higher turnout among voters in border counties and big Texas cities.

“If you aren’t bringing in and if you aren’t communicating to newer or potentially newer Democratic voters, then it’s going to make it harder for you to build the base that you need to be able to out-vote Republicans," said Brandon Rottinghaus, a political science professor at the University of Houston.

O'Rourke, who is considered Texas Democrats' best chance at winning statewide office in November, was relatively unknown outside of El Paso when he launched his campaign.

MORE: Ted Cruz vs. Beto O'Rourke: Showdown set after Texas Primary Election

He quickly drew national and statewide attention for surpassing fundraising expectations and for a campaign strategy that focused efforts on visiting all of Texas' 254 counties and hosting town halls, which he streamed on social media.

Results from the March primary show he faces some challenges in his quest to unseat Cruz.

O'Rourke struggled to garner a majority of the Democratic vote in more than half of Texas' 32 border counties.

Republicans outnumbered Democrats by a half million votes in the primary election, even as Democrats nearly doubled turnout in Texas from the last midterm primary election.

Cruz, an incumbent, has name recognition across the state and the ability to outraise O'Rourke.

O'Rourke said he isn't worried about the March primary results. He said his strategy has always been to run a "statewide, everyone in campaign" in places besides Democratic strongholds.

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His primary campaign was not about attempting to blow his Democratic opponents out of the water, but instead laying a foundation for November, O'Rourke said.

"If your primary concern is running up the numbers in the Democratic primary, then there are some very obvious safe places to spend your time," O'Rourke said. "We were everywhere."

Experts said connecting with voters in counties along the U.S.-Mexico border, driving higher turnout among Democrats and appealing to moderate GOP voters are among the biggest challenges facing O'Rourke in the coming months.

James Aldrete, a Democratic political consultant in Austin, said he's not concerned that O'Rourke did not get a larger share of primary voters. O'Rourke won his three-person primary race with 61 percent of the vote.

In 2014, Wendy Davis, a candidate for governor, won 78 percent of the vote in her two-person Democratic primary. Davis secured less votes than Ray Madrigal in 20 border counties during the primary election, but carried them in the general election against her Republican opponent Greg Abbott, who was the state's attorney general. Abbott eventually won with 59 percent of the vote.

Aldrete said he expects that Democratic voters, including those who chose a different candidate in the primary, will get behind O'Rourke in the general election.

That means the more pressing concern is whether O'Rourke will be able to reach enough new voters during his campaign to surpass Republican turnout. To do that, Aldrete said, O'Rourke will have to place a greater focus on the state's major cities and the growing suburbs that make up a bulk of the state's population.

"The challenge eventually is that Texas is just huge," Aldrete said. "How do you really get into urban and suburban areas like DFW, Houston and Harris County and really penetrate that part?"

For his part, Cruz has started efforts to rally the Republican base and dissuade moderates in his party from choosing O'Rourke by attempting to paint him as a "left-wing liberal Democrat."

"If you want a far-left, open-borders, gun-grabbing liberal, well the Democrats have given you one," Cruz said in a radio interview on Wednesday. "Congressman O'Rourke is running hard, hard left."

MORE: Early voting turnout in Texas Primary feeds excitement among Democrats, Republican concern

O'Rourke has advocated for universal healthcare, improving health outcomes for military veterans and is opposed to constructing a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. He has also pledged to grow jobs and enact environmental regulations to address climate change. He also supports ending the federal prohibition on marijuana.

Democrats have pointed to momentum behind O'Rourke's campaign and turnout during the primary election as evidence that a "blue wave" is hitting Texas this year, but Cruz is considered the favorite in the race.

The last Democrat Texans sent to the U.S. Senate was Sen. Lloyd Bentsen, who served four terms between 1971 and 1993.

Rottinghaus said O'Rourke needs to make a statewide ad buy to introduce himself to voters before Cruz has a chance to introduce the Democrat to Texans in his own words.

Even if O'Rourke doesn't run a statewide advertisement, Rottinghaus said O'Rourke needs to work hard to stay above the fray when he responds to attacks from Cruz, especially when both campaigns ramp up over the summer.

“He needs to engage lightly and pivot to the issues,” he said. “So quickly is this race going to be a bruising fistfight, that he needs to stay one round ahead of Cruz.”

And Rottinghaus said Cruz's reputation as someone who is unliked by members of his own party should allow O'Rourke to focus on improving his own image, instead of attacking Cruz.

Former House Speaker John Boehner once called Cruz "Lucifer in the flesh."

"O'Rourke doesn't have to do much to convince people that they shouldn't like Ted Cruz," Rottinghaus said.

O'Rourke said he doesn't anticipate launching an advertising campaign in the near future. He said he plans to continue visiting cities and towns across the state and talking to everyone, "as unsophisticated and unconventional as it is."

“I really want to run this campaign as honestly as I can and what feels so right right now is just being with people in their communities,” he said. “Any kind of advertising is a substitute for the in-person, direct connection."

One community he visited during the primary was Abilene.

MORE: Beto O'Rourke El Paso Voting Town Hall

Winston Ohlhausen, the GOP chairman in Taylor County which includes Abilene, said Cruz will easily win re-election to the Senate but still needs connect with voters. Since Cruz was elected, Ohlhausen said he hasn't been as present in the communities that helped get him into office.

"That's trouble with all of them. Once they get elected, they tend to slow down getting out and do what got them elected in the first place," he said. "When they get there, they start getting too many handlers and sometimes they get isolated away from the grassroots."

Cruz and O'Rourke both easily won their respective primaries in the conservative Taylor County. During the March primary election, 8,690 Republicans and 1,965 Democrats voted in the county.

While both parties are struggling to engage with voters, Ohlhausen said O'Rourke doesn't pose a serious threat to Cruz.

"The Democrats think they have a candidate, and I think he's a joke," said

Ohlhausen, adding that the party tends to put up "laughable" candidates for statewide offices. "The Democrats have gone so far left that it's hard to take any of their candidates seriously. For a conservative, it's ridiculous."

MORE: Democratic voter turnout up 86 percent over 2014 on first day of early voting

While he does not like O'Rourke and thinks he is unlikely to win much support in Taylor County, Ohlhausen said he does have a leg up over other Democrats who have run in the past.

"I'll say that he's more photogenic," he said. "He's more photogenic than what they usually have."

When Veronica Escobar, the Democrat expected to replace O'Rourke in Congress and become the first Latina to represent Texas, saw the U.S. Senate primary election results, she knew steps needed to be taken.

In a primary night victory speech, Escobar said she planned to turn her attention to O'Rourke's campaign. She has offered to help however she can.

"One of the areas where we could help them is in the Valley and some of the counties where there are opportunities for him," she said.

O'Rourke is a popular figure in El Paso but he struggled in other predominately Hispanic counties along the border.

O'Rourke was the frontrunner in all but three of Texas' 25 largest counties during the primary election.

He won 90 percent of the vote in his hometown of El Paso, the largest county along the border, but Sema Hernandez, another Democratic candidate, secured more votes than O'Rourke in the border counties of Webb, Starr and Maverick.

Hernandez, a 32-year-old small business owner, who collected 23 percent of the statewide vote, outperformed O'Rourke in more than half of Texas' 32 border counties.

A self-described "Berniecrat," Hernandez campaigned largely on social media and did not file any fundraising numbers with the Federal Election Commission during the campaign.

Rottinghaus attributed Hernandez's success primarily to her name, an analysis she has rejected. But Rottinghaus said that in areas with a higher percentage of Hispanic voters, where none of the candidates have high name recognition, a candidate with a Hispanic name has a better chance of securing more votes.

“It’s not surprising that these heavily Latino counties are going to vote for a Latino or Latina candidate,” he said.

Aldrete said it could also be because O'Rourke didn't knock Hernandez or Kimbrough while he was campaigning. Instead, he had his sights set on November.

“O’Rourke has treated this as a general election since day 1,” Aldrete said, adding that he has been successful at fundraising and drawing crowds at his campaign events. "He's not running a traditional campaign, but by all of the metrics that traditional campaign people measure things, he's been incredibly successful."

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O'Rourke said his campaign is appealing to Texans because he creates an open dialogue for people in both parties.

“I’m concerned with representing everyone in Texas,” he said. “There are a lot of Democrats, a lot of Republicans and a lot of independents or people who never voted before who are part of this and want to help Texas lead on the most important issues facing the country.”

Ric Godinez, the chairman for the Democratic Party in Hidalgo County, said O'Rourke needs to spend time in the Rio Grande Valley in the weeks leading up to November.

In Hidalgo County, the largest urban center in the Rio Grande Valley, O'Rourke won the primary with just over half of the Democratic vote, while Hernandez got more than 21 percent. Cruz won the Republican primary there with 87 percent.

"I'm not at all concerned about (O'Rourke) not winning Hidalgo County," Godinez said. "The concern is getting our folks out to vote."

Border counties, defined as areas that fall within 100 kilometers of the U.S.-Mexico border, make up a larger chunk of voters for Democrats than for Republicans. This year, 16 percent of Democratic primary votes came from border counties, compared to 2 percent for Republicans.

While a handful of border counties like Hidalgo, Webb and Cameron saw a drop in turnout during the Democratic primary, Texas' 32 border counties as a group saw an increase in turnout of about 19 percent from 2014.

Cristina Tzintzun, who founded and operates a Latino voter engagement organization called Jolt, said O'Rourke must resist the temptation to fall into the once-size-fits-all approach to Latino outreach.

Messages that work with Latino voters in the urban centers of Dallas and Houston might fall flat along the border, she said.

Escobar said it is important for El Paso's local party to get involved with O'Rourke's campaign and meet with other potential voters along the border.

She said her "fantasy" would be to drive a bus through counties along the border to knock on doors, hold rallies and "really fire up folks about the prospect of turning Texas blue."

“We’ve had our hopes dashed before about there being huge turnouts during important elections,” she said. “But we also know that it doesn’t happen organically. You’ve really have got to make sure that people understand what’s at stake and how important their vote is."

Politifact Texas: Ted Cruz (in a song) says Beto O'Rourke wants open borders and to 'take our guns'

In Willacy County, a lightly populated but heavily Democratic stronghold north of Harlingen and east of South Padre Island, activist Ernesto Cavasos said he's not worried about O'Rourke's subpar showing in South Texas.

Cavasos said he was officially neutral during the primary, but he was among the 38 percent of the Democrats in his county who cast his vote for O'Rourke. Hernandez won more than 47 percent of the county's vote.

During pre-primary visits to the area, O'Rourke brought in enthusiastic crowds, but the vote totals last week show there's much more to be done to make sure the enthusiasm in South Texas extends to November, Cavasos added.

"This is a big opportunity for our party," Cavasos said. "There are 800,000 to a million votes in South Texas. Trump is a big factor down here, but Beto has to work for it."

Can't get enough of this race? Get up to the minute news from Cruz and O'Rourke in our campaign diary. More: Beto O'Rourke vs. Ted Cruz: A campaign diary

Madlin Mekelburg and John C. Moritz are reporters with the USA Today Network Austin Bureau. Madlin can be reached at 512-479-6606; mmekelburg@elpasotimes.com; @madlinbmek on Twitter. John can be reached at 512-236-1225, John.Moritz@caller.com or on Twitter @JohnnieMo.