Get ready, America. ‘Beto For Governor’ is now official in Texas.
Politics
On Monday, former Democratic congressman and presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke announced his candidacy for governor of Texas. Beto led his announcement with a critique of “the ultraconservative policies and anti-immigrant rhetoric of Gov. Greg Abbott” and promised that if elected, he would serve as a corrective to the “extremist policies” of the state’s Republican leadership.
“I want to make sure we get past the smallness and the divisiveness of Greg Abbott,” the new Democratic candidate said.
After losses or near-losses during the last election in Virginia, New Jersey, and San Antonio, Democrats are giddy at the idea of Beto For Governor. Despite the fact that a Democrat hasn’t been in the Texas governor’s mansion since 1995, party officials are hopeful that O’Rourke’s presence at the top of the ticket will increase turnout and help Democratic candidates in down-ballot races across the state.
In announcing Beto For Governor, Mr. O’Rourke said that Gov. Abbott had “abandoned” ordinary Texans during and after the failure of the Texas grid in February, a blackout that killed hundreds of people and left millions without power in frigid conditions. However, instead of addressing the grid emergency, Republicans spent their time afterward focusing on passing laws limiting abortion and allowing Texans to carry handguns without a permit.
Beto also tore into the Republican Abbott, saying he bore responsibility for the mass shooting in El Paso in 2019 that killed 23 people. During the attack at a border-city Walmart, the gunman specifically targeted Hispanics and currently faces federal hate-crime charges. The Beto For Governor campaign cited a fund-raising letter sent by the Abbott campaign a day before the shooting which urged supporters to “defend Texas” against a surge of undocumented immigrants at the border and to “take matters into our own hands.”
“Within days, somebody did just that,” Mr. O’Rourke said. “Having learned nothing from that, he [Abbott] is using the language of invasion,” he added. The continued use of anti-immigrant rhetoric and the easier access to guns will “very likely cause other attacks like we saw in El Paso.”
Political pundits are already predicting that the 2022 contest for Texas governor will be among the most expensive ever in the state. They are also predicting that if Beto wins, he will instantly become the new darling of the Democratic Party.
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Personally I do not think a Dem can win in Texas anymore. But good luck to him.