A school shooting in Uvalde that left 19 children and two teachers dead. The end of a nearly 50-year-old constitutional right to an abortion.
A history-making spring in Texas is laying the groundwork for a contentious final four months in the race to lead the state, where Republican incumbent Gov. Greg Abbott remains the favorite but is confronting his toughest Democratic opponent yet in Beto O’Rourke.
While O’Rourke works to harness the anti-incumbent energy spurred by the seismic events of the past few months, Abbott is banking on a general election centered on stronger issues for him: the economy and the border. But even as the national environment looks bleak for Democrats, O’Rourke has been able to keep the race competitive in Texas — and Abbott’s campaign is not taking any chances.
“People are energized right now, but you know, our job is going to be to keep them that way up until Election Day on Nov. 8,” said Kim Gilby, chair of the Democratic Party in Williamson County, a battleground county north of Austin that in 2018 went for both O’Rourke for U.S. Senate and Abbott for governor. “We can’t just lose sight — there’s so much at stake right now.”
Gilby added she was not worried about O’Rourke’s ability to keep people engaged, calling him the “Energizer bunny” of the campaign trail.
Abbott still carries most of the advantages in the race — money, for one, and a midterm election that is expected to favor Republicans across the country. The governor’s allies argue that voters are more worried about the skyrocketing inflation and illegal immigration — and that O’Rourke cannot separate himself from President Joe Biden, who is very unpopular in Texas.
“First and foremost, those [social] issues won’t overcome the reality of Biden’s economy and when you ask Texans what are their biggest issues, their answers are inflation, the economy and the border,” said Dennis Bonnen, the former Texas House speaker, adding he doesn’t think attitudes in Texas about abortion and guns are enough to move the needle. “Those are issues that have been around forever. The lines have been drawn … and I don’t see significant movement either way.”
Abbott himself has downplayed the political impact of Roe v. Wade getting overturned, arguing that his gubernatorial race in 2014 against then-state Sen. Wendy Davis was a “referendum on the issue of abortion” and he won resoundingly.
To O’Rourke and his supporters, though, this spring has been game-changing. His campaign said it has had 52,000 volunteer shift sign-ups in the five weeks since the Uvalde shooting, a 300% increase over the five weeks prior. After the Roe v. Wade ruling, which came on a Friday, the campaign set out to knock on 30,000 doors over the following weekend and hit 30,279 through 87 separate block walks statewide.
“For us to do that four months away from when this election is decided just shows you how energized the people of Texas are,” O’Rourke said on a Facebook Live afterward.
He also touted a Quinnipiac University poll in mid-June that showed him trailing Abbott by 5 points. The same pollster found O’Rourke behind by 15 points in December.
“The momentum, the speed at which we are catching up and closing the gap, is amazing,” O’Rourke said. “And that was before the Dobbs decision [that overturned Roe v. Wade], that was before it was reinforced that Greg Abbott signed legislation that outlawed abortion in the state of Texas with no exceptions for rape or incest.”
To be sure, O’Rourke has continued to talk about issues that have animated his candidacy from the start — like the 2021 power-grid failure — but the headlines of recent months have given his campaign a new trajectory.
After both the mass shooting in Uvalde and the Supreme Court decision, O’Rourke capitalized by hosting rallies where huge crowds swarmed despite the sweltering weather. And shortly after the shooting, O’Rourke confronted Abbott at a news conference that led to an uproarious scene.
O’Rourke is expected to return to the road with regular events through Election Day after appearing at the state Democratic Party convention later this month in Dallas.
“The wind is blowing our way,” said Cynthia Ginyard, the Democratic Party leader in another battleground county, Fort Bend, in suburban Houston. “We have a little less convincing to do. The state of affairs is helping us do that, and I am very glad that Beto is capitalizing on these current situations.”
One measure of the momentum O’Rourke has received lately could come later this month, when the candidates will have to report their fundraising for the first time since February.
O’Rourke successfully met a goal of raising $4 million online in the final week of the fundraising period, which ended Thursday. But Abbott’s campaign spent recent days rolling out plans for nearly $20 million in ad buys, reminding observers of his towering financial advantage over O’Rourke. As of their last fundraising report in mid-February, Abbott had roughly $50 million cash on hand compared to $7 million for O’Rourke.
Public opinion is generally on O’Rourke’s side when it comes to two major issues that have galvanized Texas Democrats more than ever lately: abortion and guns. Polls regularly show that at least pluralities of Texans want stricter gun laws and oppose totally banning abortion.
But the economy and border have ranked as more important issues for voters, and Abbott has the advantage on them. In the Quinnipiac poll, voters chose the border and economy as the two most urgent issues facing the state, and they said they trusted Abbott more than O’Rourke on them by 15- and 14-percentage-point margins, respectively.
Immigration continues to dominate headlines, and it did so tragically this past week after over 50 migrants died in connection with an abandoned tractor-trailer in San Antonio. Abbott quickly blamed the deaths of Biden and later announced new truck checkpoints, while O’Rourke said the United States needs to “dismantle human smuggling rings and replace them with expanded avenues for legal migration.”