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Beto O’Rourke is a big underdog in his race to unseat Texas Gov. Greg Abbott. The charismatic Gen X icon ran valiantly against Sen. Ted Cruz in 2018, but fell short by 2 points (about 200,000 votes), a disappointing result that could be chalked up to his failure to attract moderate voters or simply Texas not being ready to go blue (a Democrat hasn’t won statewide since the ’90s). After an ill-fated detour into the 2020 presidential primary, O’Rourke is back in his home state, running again—only this time, he’s up against Abbott, who is more popular than Cruz, and the election is happening in an environment far less friendly to Democrats. Early polling has O’Rourke behind by somewhere between five and 10 points, and the Cook Political Report rates the governor’s seat as “likely Republican.” It’s a competitive race, but one that O’Rourke is likely to lose.
But there’s still a lot of excitement around his campaign, as evidenced by the $2 million he raised in the first 24 hours of his official announcement and the $7.2 million he raised in the first 46 days. This makes him something of a model for a typical donor conundrum: When should you give money to a candidate who seems likely to lose?
The case for giving to Beto
To begin, we should make it clear that as a party, Democrats shouldn’t write off certain states or races as hopeless, and we should run good candidates in as many places as possible, even in conservative areas. That’s what the Democratic National Committee’s “50-state strategy” is all about. But there’s a difference between running candidates everywhere and giving them equal amounts of support. Even at a time when the party is flush, money is a finite resource, and cash spent on a hopeless race is cash that can’t be spent on a race where it could make a difference.
Then again, we’ve also seen races where a huge amount of money is poured in, so much that the Democrat outspends their Republican rival several times over—but still loses. So throwing funds at a campaign doesn’t guarantee victory. If the most important Senate and House candidates are all rolling in money (and they appear to be), it makes sense to look for other campaigns worth supporting.
O’Rourke is a longer shot than the half-dozen most competitive Senate candidates in the country, but all of them have enough money according to the latest FEC reports. Meanwhile, despite O'Rourke's solid fundraising numbers, Abbott has a huge cash-on-hand advantage because the governor has a $65 million war chest. So O’Rourke clearly needs money. And he could win, if something unexpected happens.
Additionally, there are ways that O’Rourke could help Democrats without winning. There’s evidence that competitive gubernatorial elections have “coattail” effects for state legislative races, meaning O’Rourke’s candidacy could boost down-ballot candidates because he motivates those voters to turn out.
O’Rourke has also been focused on voter registration, a hot-button issue in Texas, and he's done impressive work in this area as part of a long-term push to flip the state blue. During the 2020 election, the organization he founded, Powered by People, claims to have sent 57.8 million texts and made 18.3 million calls to Texas voters, helped register around 200,000 voters, and mobilized over 10,000 volunteers to knock on doors. Efforts like this will be even more important in 2022. Republicans in the legislature last year passed Senate Bill 1, a sweeping vote restriction measure that made it more difficult to pass ballots and for local election officials to smooth out the process. As is usual with such bills, it is obviously an attempt to discriminate against poorer voters and voters of color who are seen as the Democrats’ base. A lawsuit from a host of groups filed against Texas points to the increased difficulties in voting for those who aren’t native English speakers. In the primary elections, a shocking 23,000 mail ballots were rejected, a clear effect of SB 1’s stricter ID requirements. In this environment, it makes sense that O’Rourke’s campaign is emphasizing voter registration by, for instance, launching an initiative where volunteers drive their cars to meet Texans who want to register to vote.
Donating to O’Rourke supports those registration efforts, which obviously help Democrats all over the state, and not just his own candidacy. If he registers a lot of voters, those voters are energized by his campaign, and O’Rourke loses by a small margin, and that signals to everyone that Texas is on the verge of finally turning blue, his campaign will have won an important victory.
The case for donating money elsewhere
The best-case scenario for Texas is something like what happened in Georgia, where a combination of demographic shifts and the years-long work of activists culminated first in Stacey Abrams nearly winning the governor’s mansion, then in Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff actually capturing Senate seats from Republicans. In this comparison, O’Rourke’s campaign is comparable to Abrams’ own campaign in 2018, which might have won but for Republican voter suppression efforts. If O’Rourke comes close, it will be a signal to donors, activists and the party as a whole that Texas needs to be the area of focus in 2024, just as Georgia became a focus at the tail end of 2020.
But if turning Texas blue is a priority, there are a few organizations that are doing great work in terms of registering voters and fighting suppression efforts. These include the Texas Organizing Project, Mobilize Organize Vote Empower (MOVE) Texas, and Mi Familia Vota. You can also donate to Movement Voter Project’s Texas fund, which supports these and other groups. Some are 501(c)(3) nonprofits, meaning they are barred from expressly partisan activity and can’t directly support Democrats like O’Rourke, but they are all working on the same project of increasing voter registration, engagement and turnout, which will ultimately result in a more progressive Texas and a better chance for Democrats to win statewide.
Donating to these groups is a way to achieve the same objectives that a donation to O’Rourke’s campaign might. And they have the additional advantage of staying on the ground after the election is over — they’ll be on hand to register voters and fight the good fight beyond 2022, and even beyond 2024.
If you’re interested in helping Democrats win in Texas, donating to O’Rourke isn’t the worst idea. A competitive gubernatorial campaign would help push the state in the right direction. And at a time when Democrats are generally doing well in fundraising, it seems OK to spread money around. But Texas-focused donors should remember the groups that don’t make headlines with O’Rourke’s regularity. The fight will continue, win or lose, long after Election Day.