Tag Archives: Beto O’Rourke

State news

Beto becomes a first-name-only celebrity

Win or lose tonight, Beto O’Rourke’s name has become part of the American vernacular.

I suspect he’ll be known from here on as “Beto.” No last name needed. It’s just like a former secretary of state, former U.S. senator and former Democratic Party presidential nominee is known to many Americans as “Hillary.”

Beto’s given name is Robert Francis O’Rourke, the same first and middle names as my first political hero, the late Robert Francis Kennedy. “Beto” is a nickname popular along the border with Mexico, says the Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate.

Of course, Beto is unique enough of a name to stand alone. There are zero other Betos out there in the public arena.

Occasionally, you get celebrities known only by their first names. Arnie, Wilt, Serena, Cher come to mind immediately.

So it will be with Beto.

Yes, I hope he wins tonight. My penchant for insisting on good manners means I’ll likely refer to him as “Sen. Beto O’Rourke” initially. Subsequent references, though, likely will become just plain “Beto.”

You’ll know who I’m talking about.

State news

Beto scores endorsement from ‘conservative’ media outlet

The Texas Tribune reported recently how Beto O’Rourke and Ted Cruz are fighting for victory in what it called the nation’s “largest conservative county.”

Tarrant County fits the bill as a conservative bastion, according to the Tribune.

Thus, the county’s newspaper of record — the Fort Worth Star-Telegram — usually backs conservative candidates for public office. Not this year in the race for the U.S. Senate seat that the Republican Cruz now occupies.

Here’s a snippet of what the Star-Telegram wrote in endorsing O’Rourke, the Democratic challenger.

“Only O’Rourke seems interested in making deals or finding middle ground. That is why the El Paso Democrat would make the best senator for Tarrant County’s future, and the future of Texas. This Editorial Board has recommended conservative Republicans such as George W. Bush and Mitt Romney for president, along with U.S. Sens. John Cornyn and Kay Bailey Hutchison. But Cruz does not measure up. This office needs a reset. The Star-Telegram Editorial Board endorses Beto O’Rourke.”

O’Rourke also has earned the editorial board endorsements from the San Antonio Express-News, the Dallas Morning News, the Houston Chronicle and (not surprising in the least) the hometown El Paso Times.

It’s certainly fair to ask: Will these endorsements matter? I am not sure that endorsements from newspapers prove decisive. Texans are like most newspaper readers. They make up their minds on a whole host of factors: personal bias, philosophy, traditional family political history.

Still, I believe it’s instructive that the Star-Telegram, which purports to speak for the “largest conservative county” in America has decided that a self-described TEA Party conservative, Cruz, no longer earns its blessing.

political news, State news

Early vote numbers look like a record-breaker

Texans appear to be answering the call.

Final unofficial early vote totals for this year’s midterm election tell a potentially amazing story that might portend a record year in Texas electoral history.

About 4.9 million Texans have voted early. That number exceeds the total number of ballots cast in the 2014 midterm election. We still have Election Day awaiting us Tuesday. There will be a chance, therefore, for Texans not only to smash the previous midterm vote record to smithereens, but also to approach presidential election year vote totals.

Who knows? Maybe we’ll break the 2016 turnout.

Conventional political wisdom suggests that big midterm election turnouts traditionally bode well for Democrats. I am hoping that’s the case, not just in Texas but around the country. The U.S. House is poised to flip from Republican to Democratic control next January. That gives the so-called “other party” a chance at controlling legislative flow in one congressional chamber. The Senate remains a high hurdle, a steep hill for Democrats to clear.

But … there’s a flicker of hope — based on those early vote totals in Texas — that Democrats might be able to flip a Republican seat. It remains a long shot, from all that I can gather. Beto O’Rourke is mounting a stiff and stern challenge against Ted Cruz. The young Democratic congressman from El Paso has trudged through all 254 Texas counties, telling voters they should support him rather than the Republican incumbent.

I am one of those Texans who will vote Tuesday for O’Rourke. My hope is that there will be enough other Texans who will join me. Cruz long has been seen — even by many of his Senate colleagues — as a self-centered egotist far more interested in his own ambition than in the people he was elected in 2012 to serve.

O’Rourke has pledged, from what I understand, to serve his entire six-year Senate term if elected; Cruz has declined to make that pledge if he is re-elected. What does that tell you? It tells me the Cruz Missile is considering whether to launch another presidential bid in 2020, even against his new BFF, Donald Trump, who he once called a “sniveling coward” and an “amoral” and “pathological liar.”

Are we going to break records Tuesday? I do hope so.

International news, national news, political news, State news

Remember: Immigrants built this great nation

The Donald Trump Republican lies keep piling up.

Here is one of them: Immigrants are pouring into our country intent on harming innocent, defenseless Americans; they will steal our children and sell them into sex slavery; they will rape our women; they will peddle deadly drugs. We have to stop them now by sending thousands of heavily armed “patriotic” American fighting men and women to our southern borders.

What’s more, the lie continues, Republican opponents — Democrats, if you please — favor “open borders,” they believe we have “too much border security” and want to grant illegal immigrants “the right to vote.”

The lying is prevalent in border states, such as Texas, where a U.S. Senate campaign — Democrat Beto O’Rourke vs. Republican Ted Cruz — is heading into the home stretch.

Donald Trump is fomenting those lies with his reckless, feckless rhetoric on the stump. He whips his crowds into a frenzy with the blathering about how Democrats favor lawlessness and Republicans favor “safety and security.”

Look, this nation owes its greatness to immigrants. My sisters and I are the grandchildren of immigrants. Two of our grandparents came here from Turkey, which the president might define as a “sh**hole” country, given that it is a predominantly Muslim nation; the other two came from southern Greece. Yes, they got here legally, but they shared the same dream as others who are sneaking in illegally: They wanted to build a better life than the one they had back in the “old country.”

The same thing can be said of those who are fleeing oppression in Latin America. Yet the president seeks to lump them into a single category of “violent criminals.”

As for Democrats wanting to grant illegal immigrants the immediate “right to vote,” I am waiting to hear or read a single comment from any politician in this election cycle say such a thing. Beto O’Rourke hasn’t said it, nor has any other so-called squishy liberal/progressive politician.

What I hear them say is that they want to grant temporary reprieves from deportation for those who are here illegally; they want to ensure, through thorough background checks, that they want in for the right reasons, and they want to enable them to gain permanent resident status or — yes! — citizenship.

Once they become citizens, then they can vote! Not before! That’s what I am hearing.

I know the lying will continue, so my plea isn’t for the liars to cease. It is for the rest of us to stop swilling the poison.

local news

Beto’s been to all counties, even to the heart of Trump Country

I love how Beto O’Rourke boasts about visiting all 254 Texas counties. For the life of me I cannot fathom that, but the Democratic challenger to U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz stands by his story … and he’s sticking with it.

I cannot help but wonder how he fared when he ventured into tiny Roberts County, just northeast of Amarillo along U.S. 60. It’s been said of Roberts County that it has far more livestock than live human beings.

However, the New York Times profiled Roberts County a year ago as the nation’s friendliest county for Donald John Trump. I looked up the results from the 2016 presidential election. Trump carried Texas by about 9 percentage points, which is down from the total that previous Republican presidential nominees — Mitt Romney in 2012 and the late John McCain in 2008 — scored in their losing bids against President Obama.

Roberts County, though, voted 94 percent for Donald Trump; Hillary Clinton got the handful of votes remaining.

How does someone such as O’Rourke, a flaming liberal/progressive, actually campaign in Roberts County? I haven’t been privy to news reports on how this event took place.

Suffice to say, though, that it speaks quite well of the young man from El Paso that he is willing to travel into the heart of Trump Country — and I consider Roberts County to be Ground Zero — and pitch his notion of good government.

His strategy seems to be to cut his party’s losses in the deepest Republican-red regions of the state and hope he holds onto his margins in the urban centers where Democrats usually outperform Republicans.

If he can cut the GOP margin in Roberts County by, say, three ballots, I figure the young man is on a roll.

political news, State news

Beto wants to legalize heroin? Nope

I’ll admit to some alarm when I heard a campaign ad from Ted Cruz that asserted that his opponent, Beto O’Rourke, had pitched a notion to legalize all narcotics, including heroin.

Then I looked it up. I found out that the Republican U.S. senator from Texas has grossly misstated his Democratic challenger’s view on the subject. Cruz’s lie about O’Rourke’s view on the subject suggests to me that the campaign in Texas is heading for a photo finish next Tuesday.

I discovered this item on Politifact, which declares Cruz’s statement to be “False.”

Read the article here.

Politifact discerned that while he served on the El Paso City Council, O’Rourke called for a wide-ranging debate on the “war on drugs,” which he has declared to be an “abject failure.” He has called for the decriminalization of marijuana use. But legalizing heroin? Or other hard drugs? Not even close.

That allegation is a grotesque distortion of O’Rourke’s view on the subject, much like the distortion of O’Rourke’s view of immigration, which Cruz and other Republicans contend includes what they call an “open borders” policy.

The success of the nation’s drug war certainly is a debatable point. I tend to agree with those who contend that we cannot declare victory in this war against drugs. It’s never-ending. The cops pull a lot of vehicles over on the highway ostensibly for “traffic violations,” only to find loads of drugs and cash on board. They confiscate the dope, arrest the drivers, try the accused, convict them, send them to prison. Does that stop the drug flow? No. It doesn’t.

Do I want heroin legalized? Of course not! Based on what I’ve been able to discern, neither does Beto O’Rourke. The half-baked assertions from his political foe tell me that Cruz — who was supposed to win re-election in a stroll — is in the fight of his life.

Ted Cruz shouldn’t be allowed to lie his way back to office.

political news, State news

O’Rourke attack on Cruz carries an implied promise

Beto O’Rourke has gone negative as his campaign against Ted Cruz heads down the stretch. The Democratic challenger wants to succeed the Republican incumbent in the U.S. Senate seat representing Texas.

O’Rourke hasn’t been nasty the way some candidates around the country have become.

I want to look briefly at one TV ad that’s getting a lot of air time in the final days of the midterm election campaign.

Beto says Cruz missed 25 percent of his Senate votes in 2015 and half of them in 2016. Why? Because Cruz was seeking the Republican nomination for president of the United States.

O’Rourke then asks rhetorically whether “your employer” would keep you on the job if you missed that much work. Good question. He makes a valid point.

Let me suggest, though, that Cruz was within his right to run for president. It’s always a gamble for an incumbent officeholder to campaign full-time for the nation’s highest office, given the amount of time he or she must spend away from the job for which he is being paid; in Cruz’s case, Texans and other Americans are shelling out $175,000 annually for representation in the U.S. Senate. That ain’t chump change, man.

Cruz and other incumbent officeholders need to be mindful of the job they don’t have time to do while they seek higher office.

O’Rourke’s complaint about Cruz’s absenteeism does suggest something else. It suggests to me that if O’Rourke wins the Senate seat next week and takes office next January, he is going to commit full time for the entire length of his Senate term to serving Texans and their needs.

As I understand it, O’Rourke already has made such a pledge on the stump as he campaigns around the state. Sen. Cruz hasn’t done so.

Hmm. I want my U.S. senator to be on the job all the time on my behalf.

Yep. I’m still with Beto.

local news, State news

Beto crawls back into the belly of the GOP beast

Democratic U.S. senatorial candidate Beto O’Rourke says he doesn’t have any pollsters on his campaign staff.

If that is true — and I don’t disbelieve him — then someone is telling the young man that it is in his political interests to spend so much time in Texas’s most Republican regions as he campaigns against GOP Sen. Ted Cruz.

O’Rourke had yet another campaign rally this morning in Amarillo, which many have labeled as a sort of Ground Zero of Texas Republican politics.

Public opinion polling puts Cruz up by a 5 to 7 points, depending on the polling outfit. I’ve noted already the view expressed by some around the state that O’Rourke’s strategy appears to be to cut his expected losses in GOP-friendly rural Texas while trying to shore up his expected majorities in the state’s urban centers in places like Dallas, Houston, San Antonio and Austin.

O’Rourke certainly gins up energetic crowds wherever he goes. I have to hand it to the young congressman from El Paso for the guts he shows in venturing into the belly of the proverbial Republican beast.

He appeared recently on late-night talk show host Stephen Colbert’s show and told Colbert how he has visited every one of Texas’s 254 counties. He mentioned Muleshoe (in Bailey County) by name as one of the communities he has visited, prompting Colbert to wonder aloud that a “town with the name of Muleshoe must have great barbecue.”

Whatever. It also has great people who seem willing to listen to what this outlier Democrat has to say to them.

So it is with Amarillo residents and those who live in many rural communities throughout the state.

I don’t know whether O’Rourke’s strategy will work. The polling, if we are to believe it, tells us Cruz is leading.

Then again, the pollsters told us Hillary Clinton would be elected president in 2016 by a narrow margin. Might there be another surprise awaiting us this time around?

My hope continues to spring eternal.

political news

Both sides take heart in early vote surge

I knew it! I said so, too.

It turns out that Beto O’Rourke, the Democratic challenger, and Ted Cruz, the Republican incumbent, are staking out positive results from the spike in early voting turnout in Texas for this year’s midterm election.

O’Rourke and Cruz are battling each other. O’Rourke is courting young voters, telling them their votes will make all the difference in his underdog effort to unseat Cruz.

Meanwhile, Cruz is banking on traditional Republican strength in the midterm cycle to carry him to another six-year term.

Both campaigns are calling the news of big early vote turnout a victory for their side.

I don’t know who’s right.

However, I do know this: We vote in secret for a reason. That reason is to protect voters from coercion or pressure. We get to cast our ballots, walk away from the polling booth and keep our little secret to ourselves.

I like it that way, even though I’ve spilled the beans on this blog who is getting my vote in the Senate contest.

And it isn’t the incumbent. Hey, I’m just one vote. The rest of you get to keep your preferences to yourselves.

Just be sure to get out … and vote!

media news

Editorial boards need not reflect the community

A friend of mine challenged a blog item I posted earlier today that called attention to the Dallas Morning News’s endorsement of Beto O’Rourke in this year’s campaign for the U.S. Senate.

My friend noted that “of course DMN” would back the Democratic challenger to Republican Sen. Ted Cruz. Dallas County voted Democratic in 2016, as well as in 2012 and 2008. The paper, my friend noted, was going with the community flow.

I felt compelled to remind him that newspaper editorial boards — at least in my experience — do not necessarily strive to reflect the community’s leaning.

The example I gave him involved my nearly 11 years in Jefferson County, the largest county of the Golden Triangle region of Southeast Texas.

I worked for the Beaumont Enterprise, serving as editorial page editor. On my watch, the Enterprise endorsed Republican presidential candidates in three elections: 1984, 1988 and 1992, even though Jefferson County voters endorsed by significant majorities the Democratic candidates for president in all three elections. I told my friend the following: So … newspapers do not always reflect the communities’ political leaning. They adhere to their own philosophy or — more to the point — to their ownership’s philosophy.

So it was in 1984 particularly, when the publisher told us point blank that we were going to recommend President Reagan’s re-election. There would be no discussion. A different publisher told us the same thing in 1988 and 1992: We were going to endorse George H.W. Bush for election in ’88 and for re-election in ’92.

That’s how it works. The newspaper and its corporate ownership march to their own cadence, not necessarily the drumbeat of the community it serves. I went to Amarillo in January 1995 and learned the same thing, although the Texas Panhandle is even more solidly Republican than the Golden Triangle was solidly Democratic in the 1980s and early 1990s.

What’s more, Morris Communications, which owned the Amarillo Globe-News until 2017, is far more wedded to conservatives and Republicans than the Hearst Corporation, which still owns the Beaumont Enterprise.

It is true that Dallas County has tilted Democratic in recent election cycles. It also is true that the Dallas Morning News has endorsed plenty of conservative candidates and stood behind plenty of conservative issues over many years.

The Morning News is not a doctrinaire publication. Although I do not know what transpired when the paper’s editorial board deliberated over whom to endorse in this year’s Senate contest, I know that the published record reflects an editorial board that is far from rigid in its political outlook.

Believe me, I know a rigid media organization when I see one. I’ve worked for them.