Former nanny, warez-trader, would-be punk rock star, El Paso City Councilman, three-term U.S. Representative, magazine cover boy, and losing 2018 U.S. Senate candidate Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke is now a former Presidential candidate.
Our campaign has always been about seeing clearly, speaking honestly, and acting decisively.
In that spirit: I am announcing that my service to the country will not be as a candidate or as the nominee. https://t.co/8jrBPGuX4t
— Beto O'Rourke (@BetoORourke) November 1, 2019
O’Rourke’s rise was quick, and his fall was even quicker. Backed by family wealth and political connections, Bobby Francis became Beto and successfully primaried a Democratic incumbent in a district that hasn’t voted for a Republican since 1962, where he spent three largely undistinguished terms before running against Ted Cruz for the Senate in 2018.
The senate race is what fueled O’Rourke’s rise to national prominence. Though supported by national Democrats’ absolute hatred for Cruz, O’Rourke brought real strengths to the race. First and foremost, he did the work, campaigning hard all across the state with a grueling personal appearance schedule that rivaled similar hard work put in by Cruz in his winning 2012 race. He also built out a competent campaign infrastructure and a national fund-raising apparatus to channel in the huge sums of cash national Democrats were throwing into the race. (O’Rourke raised more money than any senate candidate ever.) “Competent campaigning and fundraising” may seem like tepid praise, but it was more than any statewide Democrat had accomplished in two decades. (Wendy Davis had gotten similar fawning press coverage and solid out-of-state money, but ran a manifestly incompetent campaign.) And he was photogenic.
All of which lead to O’Rourke receiving some of the most fawning national campaign coverage for a statewide race ever seen. National magazine after national magazine showered rose petals of praise on O’Rourke from on-high. They were so predictable you could construct a checklist of the elements included. Skateboard? Check. Punk rock? Check. Sweaty? Check. “Kennedy-esque good looks”? Check.
O’Rourke lost, but he made the race a lot closer than it should have been, and dragged a lot of down-ballot Democrats into office on his coattails in a “wavelet” year for Democrats fired up in opposition to the Trump Administration. O’Rourke picked up more votes for a Democrat than any race in Texas ever. But a side effect was helping Republicans hold onto the senate, with several Democratic incumbents (Florida’s Bill Nelson, Indiana’s Joe Donnelly, Missouri’s Claire McCaskill, and North Dakota’s Heidi Heitkamp) going to down to defeat in winnable races that didn’t receive nearly a fraction of the resources thrown at O’Rourke.
All of which naturally fueled talk of O’Rourke running for President. As I said in the very first clown car roundup, “I don’t see any reason for him not to run, with high favorables, strong polling and having just received a zillion fawning national media profiles.” He came in third behind Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders in a November 2018 preference poll of candidates, and he was Daily Kos’ second-ranked straw poll candidate behind Elizabeth Warren. And he had a huge fundraising list from his Senate run. So there were several factors that made O’Rourke’s run entirely logical.
Yet he dithered, and hemmed, and hawed, letting a dozen other candidate get the jump on him into the race, before finally launching with yet another fawning national media profile, this one in Vanity Fair, complete with Annie Leibovitz photographs, that endlessly talked about his youth and charisma.
Then he got out on the national campaign trail, where mainstream media outlets had already lined up behind candidates like Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren as their preferred favorites, and the nation found out what Texas conservatives had been saying all along: O’Rourke is a big bag of nothing. All the qualities that the media found “endearing” and “authentic” were now goofy and eminently mockable. The flaws were always there.
Quick, name a single signature issue O’Rourke stood out from other candidates on. Until his disasterous “I’m gonna grab your guns” moment, there wasn’t any. Warren was the candidate that wanted to socialize healthcare; O’Rourke was the candidate that Instagrammed his dental visit. The more a national audience saw of him the less they liked him. The harder he pandered to the hard left the more phony he seemed and the softer his poll numbers, racking up some perfect “0.0” scores, where not a single person polled planned to vote for him.
Faced with an obviously failing campaign, O’Rourke made the decision to pull the plug. That was the right decision, but I’m slightly surprised he made it, since his $3 million cash on hand was probably enough to coast into Iowa and New Hampshire with something resembling a functional campaign on one last roll of the dice. But maybe shorn of his protective media glow, O’Rourke was finally able to read the writing on the wall. The question is when the half-dozen other candidates in the race doing even worse than O’Rourke drop out.
Who does his departure help? Given how minimal his remaining support was, probably no one. An earlier O’Rourke exit might have helped Julian Castro snag additional Texas funding, but his campaign has been flatlined for a while.
O’Rourke was a deeply flawed candidate, but I suspect he might have peaked higher and lasted longer if he’d jumped into the race right after the senate race loss. By the time he finally got in, his buzz had already died and a lot of higher profile candidate had locked up funding and campaign talent before he could. I think he still would have lost, but he might have gone out in a big bang rather than a whimper.
There’s something weirdly appropriate about the fake Hispanic candidate ending his campaign on the Day of the Dead.
Tags: 2018 Texas Senate Race, 2020 Presidential Race, Beto O'Rourke, El Paso, Elections, Media Watch, Texas
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