Over 25,000 Californians donated to his Senate run. Now as O’Rourke visits the state, he’s focused on voters rather than their wallets

For a moment, Beto O’Rourke, fresh faced and with a natural gift for cadence, was America’s great liberal hope – the consensus pick to be the next big thing. The two-time congressman from El Paso raised over $80m in 2018, more than any previous candidate for the US Senate, in his bid to unseat Ted Cruz. And he almost won, too, with whispers of a presidential run coming months before the vote.

But when he arrives in Los Angeles on Saturday, the first stop in a four-day swing through California, O’Rourke will be coming as not just a charismatic underdog, but as someone desperate to show he is still a rising star and not a has-been. Since launching his presidential campaign in March, O’Rourke has discovered that almost becoming a senator, and being slightly too liberal for Texas, have not proved to be standout attributes in a crowded field of contenders for the Democratic nomination.

California could help him turn that that around. Under new rules, the state’s voters can begin casting early ballots the same day as the Iowa caucuses. An 10 April survey by Quinnipiac University suggests the race in the state with the most delegates up for grabs reflects national trends: the former vice-president Joe Biden and the Vermont senator Bernie Sanders are up top, with O’Rourke, at 4%, firmly in the second tier. The California senator Kamala Harris has a huge lead in endorsements and 17% of the vote, which is enough for third.

O’Rourke is still a fundraising machine, raising $9.4m in the first quarter. His online operation and list of donors is so extensive – over 25,000 Californians donated to his Senate run in Texas – that, at least on this trip, he’s forgoing any attempts to raise more funds, focusing on voters rather than their wallets. After his rally at Los Angeles Trade Technical College, he’s hosting town halls in San Francisco and San Diego, with stops in the Central Valley in between.

His charisma is almost a liability, cynics suspecting that it masks a lack of substance. That’s not altogether fair, especially in April 2019, when few outside the Senator Elizabeth Warren have spent much time detailing specific policies. And while his rhetoric has been sweeping, O’Rourke’s emphasis on the border has been serious and distinguishing, exceeded only by the former housing and urban development secretary Julián Castro.

In his hometown of El Paso, he pre-empted a nearby speech from Donald Trump with a crowd of thousands of his own, blasting the White House’s plans for a border wall and defending the asylum-seekers that the administration would like to keep out. “We will not,” O’Rourke declared, “send them back to certain death.”

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At his campaign launch in March, O’Rourke said he would restore protections for undocumented immigrants brought to the US as children. “If we truly believe we are a country of immigrants and asylum seekers and refugees, the very premise of our strength, success and our security, let us free every single Dreamer from any fear of deportation,” he said.

The entire Democratic field would agree with that. But O’Rourke, the only fluent Spanish speaker in the race – Pete Buttigieg is reportedly “proficient”, while Castro says he’s halfway there – has returned to the issue time and again, visiting immigrant detention centers. He also made it a point to extend his critique of US immigration policy beyond the extremes of the current White House, criticizing his fellow Democrats, including Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, for helping “further militarize the border”. Additionally, O’Rourke has said he wouldn’t just stop funding for new barriers along the border, but, in places that have already seen construction, “take the wall down”.

His knowledge of the issue is deep, and his passion evident, but the voters to whom his message appeals – California is home to 10 million immigrants, half of them naturalized US citizens – will need assurance it is not mere rhetoric.

As with most politicians, there are contradictions in his record, a product, the candidate has said, of the compromises required of a legislator. In 2018, for example, O’Rourke voted for a spending bill that included $1.6bn in funding for border walls, including repairs to the one in El Paso. That vote came in the midst of the campaign against Cruz, not other Democrats, which was presumably a consideration; it also came after he had promised, the year before, “to help ensure that no future funding goes to border walls”.

O’Rourke’s task ahead of 2020 is not only to demonstrate there’s substance behind the charisma, but to persuade voters to listen – and believe what they hear.