Yahoo by Holly Bailey 9/5/2018
Democratic Rep. Beto O’Rourke hasn’t led in a single poll since he began his bid to unseat Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, but he has become a political sensation anyway, thanks in part to his endless reality show of Facebook live streams and video clips that have quickly gone viral.
First, there was the clip of the three-term congressman from El Paso, Texas, jamming with Willie Nelson on the Fourth of July, which was viewed a half-million times. Some 200,000 and counting watched O’Rourke skateboard around a Whataburger parking lot two weeks ago, the 45-year-old lawmaker letting out a “fshhhhhhoo†as he zoomed by the iPhone held by one of his staffers. An additional 88,000 watched O’Rourke fold his clothes at a laundromat during his month-long swing through Texas last month — a mundane glimpse at life on the campaign trail that sent at least one Facebook commenter into an open swoon over the Senate candidate’s ability to line up the seams on his shirts.
It was just a few days later that Beto-mania, as Texans have come refer to it, hit a new peak in the form of a viral video of O’Rourke defending NFL players’ right to protest during the national anthem. The clip had already garnered millions of views — to date, it has gotten at least 30 million on Facebook and almost 19 million on Twitter — when celebrities took notice. Kevin Bacon retweeted it (prompting a confusing counterattack from Cruz involving “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.â€) Russell Crowe praised O’Rourke as a “dude.†LeBron James called it a “must watch.†And comedian Ellen DeGeneres invited O’Rourke to come on her talk show, where he is scheduled to appear Wednesday, generating another round of free publicity for campaign that has not struggled to get media attention.
Heading into the final stretch before Election Day, the political momentum in the race appears to be on O’Rourke’s side, with his attention-getting social media strategy, fawning media coverage (including a recent Vanity Fair piece that speculated he could run for president in 2020, even if he loses his bid for Senate), massive fundraising and packed crowds that seem to be growing bigger by the day.
Though O’Rourke has yet to pass Cruz in the polls, he’s gotten within single digits, including in an NBC/Marist poll last month that found him just 4 points behind his opponent — a shocking development in bright red Texas where a Democrat hasn’t won a statewide election since 1994. And the trend this year is for progressive insurgents to outperform their polling numbers when actual votes are cast.
But for all of this, there are growing concerns among some Democrats in Texas that O’Rourke might not be prepared to handle the coming onslaught of political attacks from Cruz and his well-financed allies, as Republicans battle to hang on to a seat that could prove critical for their control of the Senate next year.
Though the race has been intense for months, the GOP campaign to define and attack O’Rourke has ramped up in recent days, as Cruz and outside GOP groups launched new efforts to undermine O’Rourke’s character and stop his rise in the polls.
On Tuesday, after more than a week of attacking O’Rourke for his position on the NFL protests, Cruz published a 25-second clip of what his campaign claimed was proof that O’Rourke also supported burning the American flag. The video featured a snippet of O’Rourke’s rambling four-minute-long response to a voter who asked him about his support for NFL protests and whether he also supported flag burning during a town hall last week in El Paso.
More:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/beto-beta-ted-cruzs-young-challenger-prepared-whats-hit-152252927.html
