Check out the website: https://lenspoliticalnotes.com Look at the recent Political Notes and Len’s Letters on the website.
Governor: Political Note #402 Katie Hobbs Arizona Governor, Political Note #358 Laura Kelly Kansas Governor, Political Note #407 Janet Mills Maine Governor, Political Note #381 Gretchen Whitmer Michigan Governor, Political Note # 414 Steve Sisolak Nevada Governor, Political Note #426 Josh Shapiro Pennsylvania Governor, Political Note #431 Beto O’Rourke Texas Governor, Political Note #366 Tony Evers Wisconsin Governor.
Lt. Governor: Political Note #419 Matthew Dowd Texas Lt. Governor
Attorney General: Political Note #425 Chris Mann Kansas Attorney General, Political Note #415 Dana Nessel Michigan Attorney General, Political Note #367, Political Note #360 Aaron Ford Nevada Attorney General, Josh Kaul Wisconsin Attorney General
Secretary of State: Political Note #409 Bee Nguyen Georgia Secretary of State
December 7th, 2021 Political Note #431 Beto O’Rourke Texas Governor
2022 General Election
Beto O’Rourke https://betoorourke.com has finally announced he is running for Governor of Texas. Is he in a better position than when he ran for Senator against Ted Cruz in 2018 and lost by 2.5 points? Or worse?
- He is now a national figure and should be able to raise even more money than he did in 2018.
- In July, 2021, Greg Abbott was reported to have raised $55 million for this campaign. Immediately after announcing he was running, Beto O’Rourke raised $2 million. He’s going to have to raise a lot more money
- Governor Greg Abbott, is no less loathed nationally than Beto O’Rourke’s opponent Ted Cruz was in 2018. More important. Greg Abbott is unpopular in Texas, which was not true of Ted Cruz in 2018.
- Beto O’Rourke has dug himself a couple of holes. He wore out some of his welcome in his failed and foolish presidential run. His remarks on gun safety have Republicans itching to campaign against him on that issue. They may be wrong, Texas may have changed.
- Texas certainly has changed. It is not yet California, though. Austin is no San Francisco, but it is more appealing to progressives than Sacramento. People keep moving to Texas. Republicans can gerrymander congressional districts to minimize the effect of the newcomers, but they can’t gerrymander against state-wide elections. For state-wide elections, they have to suppress.
We are familiar with Beto O’Rourke’s story now. He was given the Latino nickname Beto when he was very young. Even though his father was a county commissioner and ultimately county judge (the equivalent of a county executive), Beto O’Rourke showed much greater interest in rock music than in politics. His parents sent him off to a single sex boarding school in Virginia. From there he went to Columbia.
At Columbia, Beto O’Rourke had some interest in sports and much greater interest in music, in writing, and in hacking into computers. He has acknowledged finding a way to access long-distance phone service to operate his modem. He rowed for the heavyweight crew team. He wrote short stories that had violent and sexual themes. He learned and played bass guitar in bands – locally in El Paso and in New York. He even played the drums in one band.
The best known band he played in was Foss, with which he toured in Canada and the US. One particularly memorable gig was on an Evangelical television show. They got the gig because one of the Foss members, not necessarily Beto O’Rourke, claimed the band played Christian rock. The host acknowledged “they kind of pulled a fast one on me. But we enjoyed it. Mostly I can’t believe he [referring to the then Congressman] grew up to be a functioning member of society.”
Graduated in 1995, Beto O’Rourke was home by 1998. Living in an apartment building owned by his father, he worked for an internet service run by his uncle and tracked inventory for his mother’s furniture store. With a $20,000 loan from his father, he co-founded a software company and created, within the company, an internet site and web company. If making money is the same as a “functioning member of society,” Beto O’Rourke had not achieved that goal.
El Paso’s 2001 choice of a sympathetic politician for mayor gave Beto O’Rourke some enthusiasm for politics. After the mayor lost in the following election, Beto O’Rourke and three friends ran for City Council. Three of the four got elected. Whether out of malice or admiration, the City Council elected Beto O’Rourke mayor. He agreed to take on the job if they began rotating the mayoralty.
With that election, Beto O’Rourke became a kind of politician. He supported the improvement of the business district. In 2009, he proposed a resolution to examine the war on drugs and to repeal what he called “ineffective marijuana laws.” In 2012, he ran for Congress. He worked hard at campaigning. He knocked on doors, touted how he differed from the sitting Congressman on drug issues and rights for gays and Lesbians. He proposed an ombudsman to investigate violence and civil rights violations by officers on the border.
Beto O’Rourke was elected in 2012, reelected in 2014 and 2016. Occasionally, he demonstrated his audacity. In 2016, he supported Tim Ryan’s attempt to unseat Nancy Pelosi as Speaker. Previously, he had joined with a group of Congressman to oppose the rapid approval of the Iron Dome defense system for Israel, expressing dismay at the failure to actually have a debate on the topic. In 2017, he and a bipartisan group (in the days when bipartisanship was possible) proposed that US citizens be allowed to sponsor their spouses for legal immigration. Unable to board an airplane at a snowed in DC airport, he and African American Republican Texas Congressman Will Hurd streamed music and their conversation as they drove from DC to Texas.
The best example of Beto O’Rourke’s audacity occurred during his 2018 run for the US Senate against Ted Cruz, the run itself fueled by a belief that the Democrats time had come to Texas and he could win the election. He rejected the use of pollsters or professional political consultants. He relied on inexperienced volunteers and small donors from all over the country, eventually raising $80 million. He reminded people that he toured in a rock band, supported Colin Kaepernick’s right to take a knee before football games in support of victims of police violence. In general, he took positions that particularly appealed to young voters.
Neither the money nor the audacious positions were enough to win. Beto O’Rourke walked away from the campaign claiming that he had helped flip Texas House and Senate seats and judicial seats. He received 100,000 more votes than Hillary Clinton had received in Texas. All that gave him confidence that he could run for President. After a four-month presidential campaign, he endorsed Joe Biden.
As he entered the gubernatorial campaign, Beto O’Rourke has found that some of his audacious positions have caught up with him – in a good way. His support for the legalization of marijuana is no longer unusual. His concern about climate change is now mainstream. So is his support for strengthening anti-trust laws. His foreign policy views are not so crucial for a candidate for governor, but his support for the Iran nuclear deal has been confirmed by the mess created by Trump’s withdrawal from the deal. Similarly, his concerns about the role of Saudi Arabia in Yemen and his concerns about the Israeli government under ex Prime Minister Netanyahu are now nearly conventional.
Beto O’Rourke does have a very un-Texas solution to mass shootings. He not only supports universal background checks for the purpose of guns, he would ban private ownership of assault weapons. He will lose some votes in Texas because of that position. His attribution of recent immigration from the northern triangle of Central America to policies that grew out of American interventions decades ago seems wise. Insufficient, though. He would take down the Trump wall, demilitarize the border, and offer citizenship to DREAMers. He’ll need something more to be persuasive about immigration in his Texas run.
Wherever Beto O’Rourke finds himself on the immigration issue, he will be far more appealing than Governor Greg Abbott. Abbott is on the wrong side of issues from gun safety to same sex marriage to abortion. Minds will not change on these matters, though some abortion opponents may think that the Texas abortion law went much too far. Some independents or even Republicans might see the benefit of expanding access to Medicaid under the
Affordable Care Act. Abbott could be vulnerable for the abortion law, for the failure to expand Medicaid, for his handling of the Covid crisis, and especially the disastrous winter when the power grid went down. Let’s make this a successful statewide campaign for Beto O’Rourke https://betoorourke.com. Donate to his election. We don’t have to come up with $80 million all at once, but it would be great of Beto O’Rourke’s old supporters could whittle away at the gap created by the money Abbott has accumulated.
Help elect Democratic Governors in 2021
Incumbent Governors and a candidate for an Open Democratic Seat to Support
Kansas Laura Kelly (Toss up) https://www.laurakellyforkansas.com
Maine Janet Mills (Likely D) https://www.janetmills.com/
Michigan Gretchen Whitmer (Lean D) https://www.gretchenwhitmer.com
Minnesota Tim Walz (Likely D) https://walzflanagan.org
Nevada Steve Sisolak (Likely D) https://stevesisolak.com
Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro (Toss Up) https://joshshapiro.org to keep Tom Wolf’s seat Democratic
Wisconsin Tony Evers (Lean D) https://tonyevers.com
Candidates to flip Republican Governors.
Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs https://www.katiehobbs.org will be the nominee against any of 5 Rs now running (Toss up)
Texas Ex Congressman Beto O’Rourke https://betoorourke.com has announced and will be the nominee (Likely R)
Arkansas Chris Jones https://chrisforgovernor.com is an interesting opponent for Sara Huckabee Sanders for this open Republican seat (Safe R)
Georgia Ex State House Minority Leader Stacey Abrams https://staceyabrams.com has announced and will be the nominee (Lean R) against Inc Brian Kemp or one of his challengers
In some states, we don’t know who the Democratic nominee will be
Florida Ex Gov and Rep Charlie Crist and Ag Commissioner Nikki Fried are the principal competitors for the Democratic nomination (Lean R)
Ohio Mayors John Cranley and Nan Whaley have announced for this seat where the Republican governor is facing a primary challenge (Likely R)
Maryland I count eight candidates so far for this formerly Republican open seat (Lean D)
Organizations to support
The Democratic National Committee (DNC). https://democrats.org
The Democratic Senate Campaign Committee (DSCC) https://www.dscc.org
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) https://dccc.org
The Democratic Governors Association (DGA) https://democraticgovernors.org
The Democratic Attorneys General Association (DAGA) https://dems.ag
The Democratic Association of Secretaries of State (DASS) https://demsofstate.org
The Democratic (State) Legislative Campaign Committee (DLCC) https://dlcc.org
Fair Fight https://fairfight.com Stacey Abrams organization to support fair elections
National Democratic Redistricting Committee (NRDC) https://democraticredistricting.com Led by Eric Holder
The Lincoln Project https://lincolnproject.us. Ex Republicans with tough messaging.
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Support Beto O’Rourke and Democrats across the nation. Texas needs the roads, bridges, highways, and power grid infrastructure the Democrats are funding.
