Beto O’Rourke Could Be Texas Democrats’ Best Hope to Replace Greg Abbott

Beto O’Rourke has yet to announce any 2022 plans, but many Texas politicians expect news of a gubernatorial bid to come soon. (Photo by Gage Skidmore.)

It’s a scene that’s been repeated time and time again. Summer in Texas, and Beto O’Rourke is on the road—this time, criss-crossing the state, visiting nearly 20 cities in just over two weeks. These rallies are supposedly about getting people registered to vote and drawing support for federal election reform, but you wouldn’t know that by glancing at the crowds. O’Rourke isn’t currently running for office, but supporters have pulled their 2018 and 2020 yard signs out of the garage. Some, carrying their cardboard proudly, have sharpied over the old slogans to write “Beto for Governor.” 

Beto for Senate. Beto for President. Could Beto for Governor be the one that sticks?

Former El Paso Congressman Beto O’Rourke has been on the road now for four-odd years, trying to make the dream of Blue Texas a reality. His race against widely-hated Senator Ted Cruz and his long-shot bid for the presidency both failed, but a third time could be the charm as Governor Greg Abbott comes up for re-election in just twelve months. O’Rourke is the Texas Democrats’ best man for the job. 

O’Rourke launched into the state-wide spotlight with his bold bid against longtime Senator Ted Cruz back in 2018, putting himself into the race as a grassroots, authentically-Texan candidate. He made headlines for road-tripping through all 254 counties in Texas, drawing crowds even in “the reddest of red” towns. He stopped by a Whataburger drive-through after a debate. He even helped reunite two lost dogs with their owner on one of his frequent Instagram Lives. The approachable, affable image worked: O’Rourke shattered Senate fundraising records, collecting $38.1 million in the third quarter of 2018 and over $80 million total by the end of the campaign. 

O’Rourke ended up losing that race, but only by 2.6 points—a huge narrowing of the almost 16-point lead Cruz held in his 2012 win. For many, it was proof that a Blue Texas was on the horizon, not just a pipe-dream held by Democrats nostalgic for the days of Ann Richards, Texas’s last Democratic governor in the early 1990s. Importantly, it also made “Beto” a national name. 

If Blue Texas did start off as a pipe-dream, though, O’Rourke’s 2020 presidential bid was a fantasy from the get-go. His intent, surely, couldn’t have been to win; it must have been to draw more national attention, or maybe shoot for a cabinet nomination. In any case, his friendly, progressive-for-Texas image didn’t hold up in the bloodbath that was the Democratic primaries. After suffering brutal debates, poor fundraising results, and drops in the polls, O’Rourke left the race in November 2019, and his fresh-faced, political-ingenue image was gone with him. Somehow, stopping by Whataburger for a post-rally bite seems a more obvious political stunt when accompanied by Joe Biden. 

But O’Rourke’s failure on the national stage doesn’t mean he can’t succeed on the state level—in fact, just the opposite. O’Rourke struggled to gain traction in the 2020 presidential race, and his attempts to pick up voters on the left just didn’t stick. But in Texas, coming off as moderate is one of O’Rourke’s greatest strengths—the anti-Trump Republicans and Independents who gave Biden such a strong showing in the state last November were turned off by down-ballot Democrats they saw as too liberal, meaning that a centrist alternative to Abbott may be a strong threat. Abbott is already putting out attack ads painting O’Rourke as a pro-riot extremist, showing the power of this potential moderate image. 

Furthermore, O’Rourke won’t be trying to make a name for himself in a crowded primary field this time around, like he was in 2020; 81% of Texas Democrats already think he’d make a good governor. Mathew McConaughey, who sources allege has been floating a run against Abbott, is a wild card, of course, but as O’Rourke himself said, no one knows “how [McConaughey] feels about any of the issues.” 

Plus, O’Rourke hasn’t spent the past two years sitting at home, live streaming his bread-baking sessions. Beto’s been doing what Beto does best: connecting with and working for the people of Texas. During last February’s power outages, he organized a phone banking drive that connected 900,000 senior citizens to necessary resources and delivered pallets of bottled water to counties under boil orders himself. His organization, Powered by the People, registered over 200,000 new Texas voters for the 2020 general election. Just this September, he published an op-ed in the El Paso Matters sharply criticizing Biden’s handling of the Haitian migrant crisis. O’Rourke is making it clear once again to voters: before being a Democrat, a national politician, or a bleeding-heart liberal, he’s always been a Texan, just like them.

Governor Abbott is polling five points above O’Rourke in early polls, but that lead is tenuous. After signing the country’s strictest new abortion laws, which have divided the right, and imposing stringent anti-mask orders that even some ultra-red counties have resisted, Abbott’s reelection campaign stands on shaky ground. And of course, nobody who went a week without power can forget the complete and utter failure of energy policy seen last February. This cycle is Texas’s best chance to get Abbott out of office, and it’s Beto O’Rourke’s race to lose. 

Avery Lambert (BC ‘25) is a seventh-generation Texan and a staff writer for CPR. She plans to major in Political Science and Medieval and Renaissance Studies.