BROWNSVILLE — Beto O’Rourke is trying to drive up turnout in South Texas by tapping into passions stirred by separation of immigrant children from their parents and widespread revulsion toward corporate-funded politicians.

His strategy for converting the lower Rio Grande Valley from primary-night embarrassment to November surprise also relies heavily on word of mouth about his relentless stumping and the border region's resentment of how it's been treated by Washington and Austin.

In a swing through Laredo, McAllen and Brownsville over the weekend, the Democratic Senate candidate excited large crowds most when he talked about clean-money elections and pivoting U.S. immigration policy away from building a wall along the Texas-Mexico border and toward helping young people brought into the country without papers.

As he concluded his third town hall of the weekend, O’Rourke was asked if he has made headway toward solving Texas Democrats’ vexing problem of low turnout in South Texas in off-year fall elections.

“Feels like it,” he said. “Everywhere we go, there’s just an intensity. ... The numbers feel good. The energy feels good. And again, if those polls are to be believed, we’re within contention.”

O’Rourke, a three-term El Paso congressman, is trying to unseat freshman GOP Sen. Ted Cruz in the Nov. 6 election. The Quinnipiac University poll, a survey generally viewed as reliable, has shown O’Rourke within six percentage points of Cruz — about half of the margin it found in late May.

Most political scientists and veteran campaign consultants have said that in bright-red Texas, it’s still Cruz’s race to lose.

While O’Rourke spent the weekend in the valley, Cruz campaigned in more GOP-friendly Corpus Christi and Victoria in South Texas.

Cruz slammed O’Rourke for recently siding with National Football League players who have knelt during the national anthem at the start of games.

Cruz dismissed O’Rourke’s comparison of the gesture to protests by civil rights activist in the 1960s.

"When Beto O'Rourke says he can't think of anything more American [than players taking a knee], well I got to tell you, I can," Cruz said to loud applause before about 500 supporters, according to the Corpus Christi Caller Times. Cruz cited military personnel's practice of standing and saluting the flag when the anthem is played.

Later Saturday, O’Rourke stood by his statement. He said peaceful protest of deep-seated problems such as racial injustice is an example of “the genius of this country.”

For months, Cruz has portrayed O'Rourke as out of the mainstream. A Cruz campaign jingle claimed O'Rourke favors open borders and taking people's guns — claims a leading fact-checking service found to be mostly false. More recently, Cruz said O'Rourke "is open to abolishing ICE," the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. Politifact Texas found that to be mostly true.

At Laredo’s North Central Park on Saturday morning, O’Rourke was heckled for emphasizing President Donald Trump’s zero-tolerance policy. Until Trump suspended it recently, the policy required ICE to separate children of unauthorized immigrants from their parents.

Former Webb County sheriff’s department Capt. Jerry Carmona, a Trump supporter, allowed O’Rourke to finish a pep talk to block-walkers, people who volunteer to knock on doors to help generate higher voter turnout. The two then huddled.

Afterward, Carmona, 56, said of O’Rourke, “He’s a real good guy.” But Carmona said Trump is “righteous” in cracking down on illegal immigration. He said O’Rourke underestimates security risks caused by a porous U.S.-Mexico border. So do far too many residents of Laredo, who as Democrats “are one-party minded,” he said with evident disapproval.

'Politicians are liars'

O’Rourke wants more of the region’s reliable Democratic voters to show up at the polls.

In non-presidential election years, “most of the local races get decided in the primary,” said former Webb County Democratic chairman Sergio Romo, who owns a video-production company. Participation dips in November, he said.

O’Rourke came out of March’s Senate primary with work to do, as even he and his supporters acknowledge.

Against lightly funded Democratic opponents Sema Hernandez and Edward Kimbrough, he lost more than a dozen South Texas counties to the former, a Houston resident who barely campaigned. O’Rourke carried the lower Valley’s two most populous counties, Cameron and Hidalgo — but the latter, by only 429 votes out nearly 38,000 cast. Experts credited Hernandez’s Hispanic surname, though she also touted her support for Vermont’s liberal Sen. Bernie Sanders.

“They weren’t that well-informed about Beto yet,” Romo said of area voters.

In Cameron County, Harlingen ninth-grade geography teacher J. Seymour Guenthner and retired music booking agent Nancy Fly are among about a half-dozen die-hard O’Rourke fans who helped launch a “grass-roots headquarters” in their town. They work out of donated office space and are unpaid volunteers. According to O’Rourke’s website, the campaign also has such headquarters in Carrizo Springs, Kingsville and McAllen.

“There’s a recognition that activating the vote down here is crucial to a Texas-blue strategy,” Guenthner said.

Trump’s family separation policy “woke a lot of people up,” he said.

Fly explained, “Family is everything down here.”

O’Rourke’s renunciation of political-action committee contributions is a big help, she said.

“When we knock on the door, there are people who say, ‘Oh, I don’t vote. All politicians are liars. They never do anything for us,’” Fly recalled.

Guenthner interrupted, “Lot of apathy.”

She continued, “We stop and tell them, no, this year is different. It gives us something good to talk about,” she said of O’Rourke’s no-PAC-money pledge.

U.S. Rep. Beto O'Rourke, a Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in Texas, spoke to a large crowd of supporters Saturday at Tex-Mex Night Club in Brownsville. (The Associated Press / Miguel Roberts)

Front-door connections

O’Rourke has said his best material for his speeches comes from house calls, which he said were key to his 2012 upset of eight-term El Paso Democratic Rep. Silvestre Reyes.

“These stories I tell on the road, very often they come from knocking on doors, meeting someone,” he told reporters in Brownsville late Saturday.

Asked if he would hire block-walkers in an attempt to pump turnout in the valley, a practice that in some cases has led to controversy, O’Rourke wouldn’t rule it out.

“There are some neighborhoods where the residents ... don’t have the luxury [to volunteer because] they’re working their second job or their third job,” he said.

“If we can find paid staff in those neighborhoods who are going to be able to knock on doors, who know their neighbors, we’ll do that as well.”

Social media has helped O’Rourke draw crowds and generate excitement. He is just starting to advertise on TV.

Still, he wants an army of supporters out on the streets.

“That eyeball-to-eyeball connection at a front door — nothing beats that,” he explained.

In Laredo, at the first of three “Musica con Beto” events in the valley, Minnie Dora Bunn Haynes greeted friends filtering into the Casablanca Ballroom for a combination of comedy, music and speeches.

“Beto feels like a real human,” said Haynes, who with her husband owns a ranch in La Salle County. “His views on the border are similar to ours.”

A female friend of Haynes brushed by, saying, in a reference to O’Rourke, “I want to see what he looks like.”

“He’s so cute,” Haynes replied. “Actually, it helps if you’re decent-looking.”

At every stop, O’Rourke recounted his El Paso boyhood and how, only slowly, he came to realize how special the border region is.

“It was a place that didn’t stand up for itself when I was growing up,” he said of his hometown.

“There’s this fierce pride among the people of the border now. It couldn’t come at a better time.”