MCLENNAN County in Texas witnessed two unusual events on August 21st. The first was a solar eclipse, the second a Democrat running for the Senate—though the county, in sunbaked central Texas, went for Donald Trump by 27 points over Hillary Clinton. Texas may be increasingly diverse (it is 40% Hispanic) but has not elected a Democratic senator in 30 years.

The Democrat was Representative Beto O’Rourke—a rangy, earnest former punk-rock musician, software entrepreneur and congressman for the border town of El Paso. He delivered his message to a crowd at the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum in Waco. Lots of Democrats see an opportunity in Mr Trump. With each day such partisans are sure that this president will disgust more decent Americans and disappoint the bigots and chumps who still admire him. Angry resistance to such a brute, they feel, must bring victory. Mr O’Rourke, a floppy-haired 44-year-old who reminds fans of Robert Kennedy, sees a different opportunity. His campaign amounts to a bet that when voters chose an outsider-strongman as president, they showed a desire to take risks to end Washington gridlock—and are not too fussed about ideological questions like the size of government.

A conventional Democrat running for the Senate in Texas would lambast the Republican up for re-election in 2018: Ted Cruz, a divisive, God-and-guns, government-bashing conservative and former presidential challenger. Instead, Mr O’Rourke barely mentions Mr Cruz. He merely contrasts his own record of holding monthly town-hall meetings in El Paso (meeting voters instils a “healthy fear” when casting votes in DC, he says) with Mr Cruz’s relative inaccessibility.

Both loved and loathed, Mr Cruz enjoys near universal name recognition in Texas and has access to colossal funding. Mr O’Rourke, in his third term representing a border city in a far corner of the state, has forsworn money from political action committees, secretive outfits which can accept unlimited donations. His hope lies in individual donations from around the country. He often mentions the viral online success of a two-day road trip he made in March with a Republican congressman from Texas, Will Hurd, after a snowstorm grounded flights to Washington. The genial pair (Mr Hurd is an ex-CIA agent unafraid to criticise Mr Trump) drew national attention with their livestreamed journey, as they munched bad food and debated politics.

An O’Rourke campaign stop features many stories of Republican- and Democratic-voting Texans he has met on a long tour of the state in a pickup truck (Waco was Day 24). He frequently concludes that “the only way to get meaningful things done” is to work across party lines. Though he disagrees with Mr Trump over such issues as immigration, the environment and criminal-justice reform, when he sees common ground—for instance, their shared scepticism about open-ended foreign wars—he says so. He stresses apprenticeships, job-training and health policies that both parties can support.

El Paso is home to a large army base and 54,000 ex-servicemen, and the Democrat has made veterans’ affairs a focus of his work. In Waco, and the next day in Killeen, near a giant army base at Fort Hood, Mr O’Rourke described a bill he is co-sponsoring with a Republican from Colorado, Mike Coffman, allowing troubled veterans with a less-than-honourable discharge access to mental health services at veterans’ hospitals. Mr Coffman pointed out a mistake in the bill he had drafted, Mr O’Rourke related. Because their bill is bipartisan it passed the House veterans’ affairs committee unanimously, giving it better odds of becoming law. “Let’s have a round of applause for bipartisanship,” he cried.

In veterans’ affairs, Mr O’Rourke has stumbled on an interesting speciality. Americans reveal much about their real beliefs whenever they demand (as almost all do) more generous, federally funded health care and benefits for ex-servicemen, one of the few groups to bask in nearly unanimous public approval. If conservatives truly believed that “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help” are the most terrifying words in the English language, to quote the old Reagan joke, they would not want to inflict the cruelty of federal help on the ex-soldiers they revere. In truth, lots of Republicans like safety-nets for the deserving (as Mr Trump understands, when he says he will not cut Social Security and Medicare for the old). What many Americans hate is redistribution to folk they see as feckless.

With his anecdotes about suicide prevention for veterans, or about Republican-voting Christians in rural cafés who worry about public-school funding, Mr O’Rourke is—in effect—exploring ways for Democrats to be the party that helps reasonable Republicans make government effective.

Weaning a big state off petty partisanship

This is not a bet on centrism. Mr O’Rourke is a pro-immigrant progressive who supports legal abortions, for instance. Instead, he talks of finding common ground with abortion opponents by working on reducing unwanted pregnancies. His is a hunch that the divides between political tribes can be bridged if voters’ aspirations are being met. That will be hard. The first question he faced in Waco was about impeaching Mr Trump, drawing cheers from the overwhelmingly Democratic crowd. A campaign stop at an American Legion post in Killeen drew Jerry Stewart, a retired meat-cutter, Vietnam veteran and Republican. Mr Stewart felt no kinship with bushy-bearded old soldiers there who asked about legalising medical marijuana (as Mr O’Rourke advocates). “To me it turned into a drug discussion,” growled Mr Stewart. “I’m strongly against marijuana, I saw in Vietnam how it messed guys up.”

Mr O’Rourke is likely to lose next year. Still, his experiment deserves to be taken seriously. His campaign aims to make politics more like public service than war. If he makes any headway, national leaders should take note.