To the true believers, none of the 14 Democrats running for president is good enough.

So the Draft Beto faithful are lighting candles and holding “Beto for President!” parties. They’re watching his interview with Oprah, over and over. They’re waiting for a sign that Beto O’Rourke is coming.

Any minute now, the former Texas congressman will announce that he is running for president. He’ll have a waiting base of apostles in California who include more than Oakland hipsters still wearing their “Beto for Senate” T-shirts.

O’Rourke’s 2018 Texas Senate campaign raised $5.5 million from 24,804 contributions from California. (Some people contributed multiple times.) That’s more than the $1.8 million that former state Sen. Kevin de León raised from 2,463 contributions from Californians for his failed Senate run against Sen. Dianne Feinstein. It’s even more than the $4.2 million that Feinstein raised from 7,025 California donations.

There are 16 Draft Beto volunteer organizers in California, including some top political operatives. Another 20 California Betoans have volunteered to hold house parties the moment the white smoke emerges from O’Rourke’s chimney. They’ve already held 14 parties across the state to urge him to run.

What is it about O’Rourke, a three-term backbench congressman who voted with President Trump 30 percent of the time — roughly twice as often as other top 2020 Democratic presidential contenders — that makes him different?

“The biggest thing for me, in this era of very divisive politics, is the word ‘empathy,’” said Ignacio Ornelas Rodriguez, a visiting scholar at UC Berkeley who lives in Campbell. “He can empathize with people from diverse backgrounds. Not just racially or ethnically diverse, but from different social backgrounds.”

To Dylah Ray, a 30-year-old Google employee who lives in Mountain View, O’Rourke has “a unique ability to connect with people and an authenticity that others don’t. He speaks with respect and dignity to people.

“I can’t wait for him to announce,” said Ray, a native Texan who returned home for two weeks to campaign for O’Rourke last fall.

We know O’Rourke is running because he essentially told Oprah Winfrey as much when she interviewed him in New York a couple of weeks ago. And no one would lie to Oprah, right?

“I’m increasingly excited about doing something — again to the best of my ability, fulfilling my purpose to its greatest level,” Beto told Oprah, if we can take the liberty of using first names here.

“Can I be part of bringing people together in a deeply divided country around things we agree are common — can we have a common conception on what it is to be American?” he said. “I think about our politics, the way that we run campaigns, the way that we connect with each other. ... If I can play some role in helping the country to do that, by God I’m going to do it.”

Nobody talks like that unless they’re running for president.

Yet other doubts remain. Like how could O’Rourke, 46, raise $80 million for his Senate race and lose to Sen. Ted Cruz? Ted Cruz? A quick refresher on Ted Cruz:

“If you killed Ted Cruz on the floor of the Senate, and the trial was in the Senate, nobody would convict you,” fellow Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham once said of him. John Boehner, the former GOP House speaker, called Cruz a “miserable son of a bitch.”

“I like Ted Cruz more than most of my colleagues, and I hate Ted Cruz,” said former Democratic Sen. Al Franken.

So if O’Rourke lost to a miserable son of a bitch, how is he going to beat Trump, who has the apparently unshakeable support of at least 40 percent of the country?

The faithful point out that O’Rourke came closer than any Democrat in two decades to winning a statewide race in deep-red Texas. His presence on the ballot juiced voter turnout enough to help Democrats flip seats in the state legislature and two GOP-held House seats.

“He excited the progressive base and was able to connect to independents and Republicans because he has a unique voice,” said Michael Soneff, a political consultant who is coordinating the Draft Beto campaign in California and Nevada. “He is going to be able to grow the party in a way that others can’t.”

O’Rourke may have a different voice, but Sen. Kamala Harris will be tough to beat her in home state. She has won three statewide races in California, has secured endorsements from top politicians including Gov. Gavin Newsom and is locking down big donors.

“But you just wait until Beto goes to the Central Valley and talks to the farmers and the farmworkers and empathizes with them — in Spanish,” said Ornelas, who attended a Draft Beto house party in Salinas this month. “Or when he goes to Oakland. Or the Salinas Valley. Or L.A. There is a lot of places he can go here.

“Just watch the way he can code shift and style shift when he goes from college campuses to talking to tech entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley,” Ornelas said.

Ornelas’ parents emigrated from Mexico when he was 4 years old. They were farmworkers in Salinas, where he grew up. And yet he feels connected to O’Rourke, the Columbia University-educated son of a Texas judge and son-in-law of a multimillionaire real estate developer.

“You can be wealthy and privileged and still be able to empathize,” Ornelas said. “I’ve been around privileged (politicians). I know who is helicoptering in to try to capture voters and do a sales pitch. But he isn’t. You’ll see.”

Joe Garofoli is The San Francisco Chronicle’s senior political writer. Email: jgarofoli@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @joegarofoli