With a new year comes new hopes for Texas Democrats. In the wake of Donald Trump’s election, the political winds have been shifting leftward, and many Democrats in Texas now believe they have the best chance in a generation to elect one of their own to statewide office.

As The Houston Chronicle reports, Democratic hopes in the Lone Star State are largely tied to one man from West Texas, the charismatic congressman from El Paso who is challenging Ted Cruz for his Senate seat. Beto O’Rourke is a Spanish fluent, fourth-generation Irish-American, a former Ivy Leaguer who grew up beside the Mexican border.

With his intimate knowledge of immigration issues and his large campaign war chest, O'Rourke has many Texans looking to the western part of the state in hopes that the former punk rocker with the Kennedyesque good looks will prove a giant-killer in 2018.