Why does Beto O’Rourke keep coming to Fort Worth in his campaign for Texas governor?
The crowd outside UNT Health Science Center’s voting location on Tuesday afternoon gathered the way people normally do for Beto O’Rourke: In a surge.
Event goers swarmed around O’Rourke, the Democratic candidate for governor, as he stood atop a plywood box and made a campaign speech reiterating his same promises to Texas, like protecting reproductive health care and canceling the STAAR test.
This stop was one of six O’Rourke made in Tarrant County on Tuesday. O’Rourke held a rally at Ridglea Theater on Camp Bowie Boulevard Sunday evening. After his UNTHSC voting center visit Tuesday afternoon, he planned to stop at the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary voting center and had a rally planned at UT Arlington that afternoon. He also stopped by voting locations in Saginaw and Hurst earlier in the day.
It isn’t the first time O’Rourke has been to Fort Worth — a spokesperson for his campaign told the Star-Telegram O’Rourke had come to the city 13 times during his run for governor against Republican incumbent Greg Abbott. The city was higher up on the list than most places in Texas when it came to the number of campaign stops, the spokesperson said. Abbott has made 10 stops in Fort Worth and will be in the city Nov. 1, a spokesperson for his campaign said in a text.
Why does O’Rourke keep stopping in Fort Worth? Because O’Rourke believes Tarrant County is the key to taking the state.
It’s a sentiment he’s shared in his 2018 race for U.S. Senate against Republican Ted Cruz. O’Rourke won the county by 3,869 votes. In 2020, President Joe Biden lost Texas but took Tarrant County narrowly too, with 1,826 more votes than former president Donald Trump.
Nearly 350,000 people who were registered to vote in Tarrant County in 2020 didn’t show up to the polls, and O’Rourke said another 125,000 people had registered to vote since then. His visits to the county have been about reaching the people no one has heard from.
“With those numbers, we see opportunity,” a hoarse-voiced O’Rourke told the Star-Telegram after his Ridglea Theater rally on Sunday. “This message, this campaign for higher teacher pay, and for expanding Medicaid and for restoring a woman’s right to choose, these are values that we know are connecting with these voters who may have sat out the last election or may have just gotten registered for the first time since the last election.“
Early voting turnout as of Tuesday afternoon was at 59,145, according to the Tarrant County Elections Administration. In the 2018 midterm election, 85,757 voters cast ballots the first two days of early voting.
O’Rourke hopes to expand on the lead he held in 2018 in Tarrant County during this election cycle. The additional margin is something he believes would help in his statewide outcome.
Polls show him trailing Gov. Greg Abbott. A University of Texas/Texas Politics Project poll released Friday had Abbott leading by 11 points.
“We’re building on the base that we built in ‘18,” O’Rourke said. “We have an opponent who has been in charge for eight years and has badly failed, and there’s just so much energy in so many new voters, and so many voters who haven’t been heard from before that we’re bringing in.”
Those at Tuesday’s event at UNTHSC seemed sure he would build on 2018’s momentum locally.
Emma Kannard and Dana Litt are relatively new to Fort Worth — Kannard moved here last year from Denton and Litt moved here four years ago from Seattle.
Kannard said she’s been impressed with the O’Rourke support she’s seen in Tarrant County. Litt said she constantly sees yard signs for O’Rourke.
Kannard was hopeful O’Rourke would see success statewide, too.
“The timing’s right,” Litt said.
O’Rourke’s focus Tuesday was on the polling centers, but those who are already there are the ones likely showing up to vote. O’Rourke said his campaign had teams of people out knocking on doors to get those who haven’t shown up to the polls out to cast a ballot.
And as people at Tuesday’s event lined up to take a picture with O’Rourke, he told each person the same thing as they stepped away: Make sure you post the picture on social media.
“That’s literally what it’s going to take is people connecting with other people,” O’Rourke said. “That’s how we win.”
This story was originally published October 25, 2022 at 3:47 PM.
