Editorial: Don't Hyperfocus on Abbott v. O'Rourke

By Thomas Warren III, Editor-in-Chief

Here we go again.

It’s midterm election season in Texas again, which means that Beto O’Rourke is once again running for office, local Republicans are once again fighting mad, and well meaning activists are again defending a mediocre Republican’s record, claiming it to be much more conservative than it actually is.

I feel like I’ve seen this movie play out once before. Didn’t we do this same thing in 2018, too?

That year, Texas voters became all hot and bothered when O’Rourke was making his first bid for statewide office against Sen. Ted Cruz. That year, Sen. Cruz narrowly squeaked out a victory that was probably tightened in-part due to his awful campaign strategy and his opponent’s willingness to actually campaign. By not campaigning until the very end of the race, Cruz nearly snatched defeat from the jaws of victory, in what would have been the first statewide win by a Texas Democrat since 1990.

In Amarillo, the 2018 race got everyone worked up. People lived on Facebook just to throw mean comments up about either of the candidates on social media. It became the dirtiest insult in the book to call another Republican a “Beto supporter.” And people packed campaign rallies for both of the candidates, with the candidates essentially preaching to the choir at every stop, with the exception of a handful of rebels that showed up from either side to heckle the candidate they didn’t like.

Remember the “oh, we will” guy from Ted Cruz’s Amarillo campaign stop?

Anyway, 2018 came and went. O’Rourke ran for president. Local Republicans called each other “Beto supporters,” and Ted Cruz went back to Washington.

That was four years ago. And now it seems like we are reliving 2018 all over again.

Now, Beto O’Rourke is once again running for something — this time for governor. The incumbent Republican, Greg Abbott, is seeking re-election and really isn’t campaigning that hard this time either, but he is in a much better financial situation than Cruz’s campaign was in in 2018, so he has plenty of money to blanket the airwaves before election day.

And while the race this year looks very different in terms of the odds — O’Rourke currently has a 5 percent chance of winning the election versus the 19 percent chance he had in 2018, according to FiveThirtyEight — it hasn’t stopped local voters from again going bananas over the election, acting like this race is the most important election in the history of elections.

It’s not the most important election in history. In fact, it’s probably not even going to be all that competitive.

O’Rourke handed Texas Republicans political ammo on a silver platter in 2019 when he called for mandatory buybacks of AR-15s and AK-47s during a presidential debate. He’s not coming back from that. He’s also not coming back from the fact that he has been directly tied to one of the most unpopular presidents in Texas history in Joe Biden, a fact that is going to drag his campaign down as national Democrats brace for an expected red wave — a boom in support for Republican candidates nationwide.

At this point in the Senate race in 2018, O’Rourke had cast himself as a common sense moderate, not taking a firm stance on many key issues important to Texas voters. Basically, Beto stood for whatever you wanted Beto to stand for. And that appealed to many Texas independents who were a little more than unhappy with Cruz after his unsuccessful campaign for president.

But, that version of O’Rourke is not coming back. While he is still not as liberal as many in his party, he has branded himself now as a left-wing progressive who wants to take Texans’ guns away. And that is going to be a tough sell in many places where he overperformed expectations in 2018.

Another point that is worth mentioning about O’Rourke is that at this point in the race four years ago, O’Rourke was chipping into Cruz’s lead in large chunks. In fact, at this point four years ago, O’Rourke was about to claim his first poll lead, with a 48-47 percent lead over Cruz in a Civiqs poll.

As of this writing, O’Rourke has not led Abbott in a single poll conducted ahead of the general election. The closest he has gotten was a two-point Abbott lead in March, reported through a Texas Lyceum poll. Abbott expanded his lead shortly after that poll was conducted and has reported leads over O’Rourke ranging from five points to 18 points. At this point four years ago, according to Texas Lyceum’s poll, O’Rourke was trailing Cruz by just two points, well within the margin of error. It’s not nearly that close this time.

There was also just one third party candidate on the ballot in that 2018 race — Libertarian Neal Dikeman — who tried to the center of Cruz and O’Rourke. It didn’t really work considering that O’Rourke was also trying to claim the center and Dikeman ended up with just under 1 percent of the total statewide vote.

This year, there will be at least two third party candidates on the ballot, with Libertarian Mark Tippetts and Green candidate Delilah Barrios on the ballot. That will have a significant impact on the race.

Still, with all of that being said, local activists are still acting like this is the most important election of all time. Just like they did in 2020. And in 2018. And in 2016. And in 2014. And in 2012.

You get my drift.

Yes, this race is important, but so is every race on the ballot. This election is not the most important one of all time and it certainly isn’t the most competitive one of all time. In fact, right now according to FiveThirtyEight’s forecast, most models have Abbott winning 53 percent and O’Rourke winning 40 percent, which would be a 13-point Abbott victory. I find that to be very plausible.

This race is probably not going to be that competitive in the long run, and while it is still important that we all get out and vote, we have got to stop acting like the stakes are higher than they have ever been. They aren’t. O’Rourke doesn’t even have a 1-in-20 chance of winning. In fact, the odds are better — by a lot — for Republicans to win the governorship in New Mexico this year than the odds are for Democrats to win the governorship in Texas. New Mexico is the same state where Democrats won gubernatorial and U.S. Senate races four years ago by 14 and 23 percent, respectively. There, Republicans have a 1-in-5 chance of winning for the governorship. That is way stronger than any projected chance for O’Rourke to win Texas’ governorship this year.

With that being said, we also have to stop rewriting history and throwing accusations around just to justify our positions in this election.

Republicans, not everyone who disagrees with you on something is an O’Rourke supporter. Additionally, not everyone who is not a full-throated Abbott supporter is an O’Rourke supporter. There will be many conservatives pinching their nose to vote for Abbott come November.

Likewise, while Republicans do need to heal whatever rifts exist in the party and vote for Abbott this November, we shouldn’t pretend like he’s this conservative icon who has been the most conservative governor in the state’s history, thereby earning him a free pass for life. Abbott hasn’t really been that conservative of a governor. In fact, he’s let conservatives down on many issues. It really wasn’t until he started feeling the pressure from Don Huffines and Allen West that he started moving to the right to fend off primary challenges. He didn’t just do that organically or adopt those positions because that’s the way he’s always been. Fox News might make him look like a conservative firebrand, but comparing him to Florida’s Gov. Ron DeSantis, Abbott is more like a mouse to DeSantis’ lion when it comes to conservative credentials.

That’s not to say that Republicans shouldn’t vote for him in November. Yes, he’s disappointing, but he is the party’s nominee. We must now vote for him, but we shouldn’t forget both the ways he has let conservatives down and the promises he has made on the campaign trail when it comes to the 2023 legislative session. If I were a betting man, I would wager that Abbott is still probably going to be occupying the Governor’s Mansion come January 2023, and it’s up to us to hold him accountable to conservatives for both his promises and failures.

I set all of this up to make this point — the 2022 election is 97 days away. On November 8, we will head to the polls to elect our governor. On November 9, people will complain or gloat on Facebook, no matter the results. Then, on November 10, we will move on to the next most important election in history.

In 98 days, the 2022 election will be over. Then, a lot of people will disappear for another two years, right at the time when it is most important they stay involved.

We have important city elections coming up in May 2023, where voters will decide the future of our city and, hopefully, will elect Alex Fairly to be our city’s next mayor, assuming citizens can convince him to run. We will also be right in the middle of a legislative session where our lawmakers will be doing everything they can to get out of the campaign promises they made to voters.

Yes, the election in 97 days is important, but what comes next is, in my opinion, even more important. We have important local elections on key issues like taxes. And we also will be tasked with holding our lawmakers to account on their campaign promises while they are in Austin, hundreds of miles from home.

Vote, campaign, be involved for 2022. But don’t hyperfocus only on this year’s election. What comes after this election is important too, and I would argue the stakes are even higher for what comes after November 8th than for what happens on that day.