AUSTIN, Texas – Democrat Beto O’Rourke campaigned far and wide across the state in his bid to unseat Gov. Greg Abbott. But for the third time in four years, he lost. He ran for U.S. Senate in 2018 and lost to Ted Cruz. He then ran a short-lived campaign for president that began strong but fizzled out.
This time around, in his run for governor, he bet on the youth vote and visited colleges all across the great state. But talking about the power grid failure, abortion and the Uvalde massacre wasn’t enough to mobilize people to show up and vote.
Now, some Texans wonder what O’Rourke will do next. A run for another office in Texas is likely a non-starter.
“We have to remember, even though Mr. O’Rourke is certainly very charismatic, very much an energetic campaigner, he works his tail off...This is a conservative state for the most part,” said Renée Cross, a political science lecturer at the University of Houston.
The double-digit margin of victory for Abbott wasn’t a surprise to analysts who’d been looking at the poll numbers for months. Abbott was always leading. But one expert thinks of O’Rourke as the leader of Democrats in Texas and someone who should stick around for the future of the party.
“I think that he stays in the movement. He stays active, just in a different way; maybe not the person that's actually running,” said Daniel Diaz, the political director of the left-leaning organization LUPE Votes. “But still definitely involved with fundraising, helping invest in the new generation of organizers or candidates at a local level at a statewide level. There's a lot there that you could still do to have a really positive impact in politics here in Texas.”
O’Rourke hasn’t announced his future plans yet and declined an interview request. But another analyst thinks he has what it takes to lead Democrats in Texas in a way that the state party hasn’t.
“I think the only person that people know is a Democrat across the state is Beto O'Rourke,” said Paul Stekler, a political documentary filmmaker and a former professor of filmmaking and public affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. “It's time for the Democrats in the state House to form an actual opposition party that people pay attention to, because again, in a vacuum, you don't exist. You can't win unless you're a player. There is not much of a Democratic Party outside of Beto, and Beto has the ability to be able to rally people, to be able to build something…But it's going to have to be organic. It's going to have to be inside of Texas.”
As people question O’Rourke’s next move, Stekler doesn’t think he’s done with politics.
“Is he still a good looking charismatic guy that can raise millions of dollars and draw large crowds? Yeah. And nobody else in the Democratic Party in Texas can do that,” Stekler said. “He had promised after 2018 that he was going to use those talents to build an infrastructure in Texas, and I think a lot of Texas Democrats are hoping that he will do that. I don't think he's going anywhere.”
Back in his hometown of El Paso, O’Rourke said on Tuesday night that he’s sticking around: “I don’t know what my role or yours will be going forward, but I’m in this fight for life. I’m in this with you.”
Only time will tell what he does next.