The Beto Bump Has Texas Democrats Feeling.... Hopeful?

Beto O’Rourke may have been defeated, but he powered a Democratic resurgence in Texas.

- Tim Murphy

Of the many concession speeches on November 6, Beto O’Rourke’s was probably the only one to feature a fog machine. It almost would have been weirder if it hadn’t. The Democratic congressman’s long-shot bid to unseat Republican Sen. Ted Cruz was defined at every step by an almost relentless opposition to orthodoxy. He swore off pollsters and money from political action committees, stumped in all 254 Texas counties, and live-streamed everything—a town hall with asylum seekers, road trips with members of Congress, early morning jogs.

Hoarse, sweaty, and still wearing his “I Voted” sticker, O’Rourke addressed supporters from a stage at a Triple-A baseball stadium in downtown El Paso, attempting to distill what the last 20 months of their lives might mean for what comes next.

Though his own plans remained unclear, he spoke eagerly about where the movement he led could go from here. “It may be in individual races, in individual communities; it may have nothing to do with politics,” he said. But “there are so many great candidates who are going to come out of this campaign whose work I look forward to supporting and following and cheering on.”

Hopeful is not how Democrats usually end election night in Texas. But if O’Rourke didn’t sound much like a losing candidate, it was because in some ways he wasn’t one. Buoyed by his campaign, and by a deep bench of down-ballot candidates, Texas Democrats had their best election in decades. They solidified control of the state’s largest cities, ended the Republican stranglehold on the suburbs, and flipped more than 100 local offices. O’Rourke may have lost, but he helped foment a Democratic awakening that could have a long-term impact on the state’s political makeup.