With Beto O’Rourke running for Texas governor, let’s get it right: Beh-to? Bay-toe?
Updated Monday morning to reflect O’Rourke’s campaign announcement.
OK, Texas, we’re doing this again, so let’s get it straight.
It’s pronounced “Beh-toe.” If you want a flourish for the proper Spanish pronunciation, hit the “t” a little harder than you otherwise would.
But let’s be clear: It’s not “Bay-toe” O’Rourke who announced Monday that he’s running for governor.
“ ‘Beto’ is actually a Spanish spelling,” said Sergio Romero, associate professor of Spanish at the University of Texas at Austin.
O’Rourke, the former El Paso congressman, shocked the world by nearly winning a Senate race and followed it with a lackluster 2020 presidential campaign. Even with his considerable flaws, is the only Democrat who will stand a chance against Gov. Greg Abbott.
Abbott has been anticipating him. Online ads punch the Democrat as “Wrong Way O’Rourke,” reminding of his liberal stances on policing and energy.
Democrats are bracing for a tough election cycle next year. The party that holds the White House nearly always loses at the midterm, and President Joe Biden’s approval ratings are low. These trends will probably be magnified in Texas, where Democrats haven’t won a statewide office in more than two decades.
Their best hope is that Abbott, trying to project ultra-conservative bona fides in a subtle battle with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, has gone so far to the right that some swing voters might vote for a Democrat. A candidate like O’Rourke at the top of the ticket might not pose a real threat to Abbott but would boost fundraising and voter turnout, and that might save a few down-ballot Democrats.
Name recognition is helpful. Unlike most Texas Democrats, plenty of people know O’Rourke. And they know him as Beto.
The nickname is a common shortened form of “Roberto” called a hypochoristic, a shortened, often affectionate nickname formed by dropping letters, Romero said. It’s common in Spanish, though of course English has “Bob” for “Robert” or “Joe” for “Joseph.”
When O’Rourke ran against Sen. Ted Cruz in 2018, Republicans accused him of using the nickname to fool Hispanic voters about his ethnicity. Many took pains to use his full name, “Robert Francis O’Rourke.”
In reality, it’s a reflection of the mixed culture in which he grew up.
“In El Paso, for example, where you have English speakers and Spanish speakers living close to each other for a long time, then you have people borrowing from each other’s language,” Romero said.
He added: “Perhaps Anglos from El Paso are trying to index, to mark, their own unique relationship to the Spanish culture through the appropriation of some things such as names that you would not see in other places in Texas.”
Of course, it didn’t hurt politically to have a catchy nickname, either, and “Beto” was used in the campaign’s signs and stickers, not “O’Rourke.”
After he did better than any statewide Democrat has in years, other candidates tried to grab a little of the magic. Longtime former state Rep. Roberto Alonzo of Dallas suddenly became “Beto” on the 2020 primary ballot for railroad commissioner. (He lost.)
No one mispronounces “Greg Abbott,” though for plenty of people, the spelling is a challenge. “Gregg” or “Abbot” is not uncommon, especially online. Few would say “Greg” in referring to him, just as Cruz (full name: Rafael Edward Cruz) rarely was tagged as just “Ted.”
O’Rourke’s fame is derived from much more than his nickname, of course. He smashed fundraising records in the run against Cruz, and he became one of the rare candidates who actually improved his political standing in a loss.
That’s not a trick you can pull twice in a row, though. O’Rourke’s disastrous presidential run, which seemed more of a vision quest than a purposeful campaign, left him with considerable baggage. In addition to the issues Abbott’s campaign has already identified, his “Hell yes, we’re going to take” away AR-15s from law-abiding owners will play again and again in ads, especially in rural Texas.
The presidential campaign robbed O’Rourke of his edge, the idea that he brought a different approach to politics that was bigger than a traditional campaign. He left the stage long before any votes were cast, looking like a standard issue progressive Democrat and now a two-time loser.
In Texas, that will be the biggest hurdle to him seeking a different appellation: Governor.
This story was originally published November 10, 2021 at 5:05 AM.
