And Cruz retains a double-digit lead in recent polls.
But something is catching here. Fueled by millions in small-dollar donations, O’Rourke is outraising Cruz. In recent weeks, President Donald Trump’s policy of separating migrant families detained at the border has given his campaign a jolt of moral clarity. And voters are responding in a way that Texas Democrats say they have not seen before in modern times.
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I got my first taste of Beto-mania on a Wednesday evening in late June on the second floor of Yard House, a generic sports bar in Washington’s Chinatown. The average age in the room hovered in the low-30s as attendees munched on mini cheeseburgers and lined up to exchange drinks tickets – obtained by making a campaign donation – for booze. The event, called “Beers with Beto,” was heavy on Texas expats.
The first attendee I spoke to, 29-year-old corporate lawyer named Brian Nistler, said he had convinced his parents, lifelong Republicans, to attend an O’Rourke town hall at a middle school in Amarillo earlier this year and that, come November, he expects them to cast their votes for a Democrat in a statewide election for the first time in their lives.
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Melanee Derenzy, a 39-year-old fitness trainer originally from Dallas, told me she had never been involved in politics before hearing about O’Rourke. “I found out about him, and I loved him, and felt I had to help out,” said Derenzy, who has volunteered to enter data and send text messages for the campaign. “I love how open he is. I love the Facebook Live.”
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For the only time in the five events I attended, O’Rourke drew a heckler. “How will you make a change?” shouted a heavyset man in his 50s sporting Ray-Bans. “He needs to tell us how he’s going to do it!”
“Shut the fuck up,” the man barked at the follow attendees who tried to quiet him. When O’Rourke’s events and logistics director, Cynthia Cano, offered the man her business card in a bid to mollify him, he crumpled it into a little ball and placed it back in her purse.
But, bizarrely, even the heckler had apparently succumbed to Beto-mania. “I like him,” the man, who identified himself only as James, told me following the altercation. “I’m voting for him.”
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After the event, hundreds of people lined up for photos with the candidate while Cano hustled them through their paces. Within a few minutes of each other, two people approached me to offer the view that O’Rourke is the second coming of another Robert Francis.
“He reminds me of Robert Kennedy, but more so,” said one of them, Dianne Martin, a 71-year-old South African immigrant who met Kennedy as a schoolgirl on his 1966 trip to the country and predicts O’Rourke will be president someday. “I can’t tell you how much I love this man.”
Originally Posted by Dan Druff
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