You Beto, you bet.
Hello all,
As you may just possibly have heard, Beto O’Rourke announced Monday that he is running for governor. His declaration ended what began months ago as widespread speculation about whether he would take the long-odds gamble of challenging Governor Greg Abbott, and culminated amidst an air of inevitability given the degree to which the wait had frozen the field of possible alternatives (sparse as it is). We spent some time this week putting together public opinion context for O’Rourke’s return to the campaign trail. It felt a tiny bit like Beto-centric 2018 again after rolling out back-to-back posts of data on Beto O’Rourke at the Texas Politics Project website. (The feeling was fleeting, given just how different and far away November 2021 feels from November 2017, though it was fun to look back at this week-in-Texas-politics round-up from March 2017, just after the O'Rourke-Hurd road trip.)
One post compiles multiple results on Texans’ views of the former member of Congress, as well as a few slices of the year-out hypothetical matchup between O’Rourke and Abbott in the October 2021 UT/Texas Tribune Poll. (Both candidates, of course, have to win their party’s primary election.)
I’ve included a few examples below, concentrating on views of O’Rourke among different groups.
 
 
Some highlights:
- In a then-hypothetical head-to-head match-up with Greg Abbott, the governor led O'Rourke 46% to 37%; about 7% took the "someone else" option, and about 10% said that they hadn't thought about it enough to have an opinion.
- Abbott led 58%-31% among White Texans; O'Rourke led 54%-13% among African Americans, and 45% to 33% among Latinos.
- Abbott led 52%-36% among men, but (reflecting gender differences in party identification) held a much narrower 42%-38% lead among women, 12% of whom said they hadn't thought about it enough to have an opinion.
- Among suburbanites, Abbott led O'Rourke 47% to 36%.
- 35% viewed Beto O'Rourke favorably (20% very favorably), while 50% viewed him unfavorably (44% very unfavorably). Within those numbers, 80% of Republicans view him very unfavorably. Views among Democrats are, not surprisingly, very favorable overall, but less intense than Republicans' red-hot negativity – of the 78% of Democrats who view O'Rourke favorably, 47% view him very favorably, and 31% somewhat favorably.
On day two of his campaign, O’Rourke made a few headlines after criticizing the Biden administration’s handling of the situation on the border, telling Jack Fink of the Dallas/Ft. Worth CBS affiliate, “It’s clear that President Biden could be doing a better job at the border, it is not enough of a priority for his administration. We’ve got to have predictability, order, and the rule of law and that means honoring our asylum laws when someone has a credible asylum claim.” We looked at several aspects of Texas public opinion on border security, particularly views of the handling of border security and immigration issues by President Biden and Gov. Abbott, to parse the politics and campaign strategy in O’Rourke’s calculation in a piece Josh Blank and I posted at the Texas Politics Project blog Thursday afternoon. Below are results for Biden and Abbott’s handling of the issues from the recently released October UT/Texas Tribune Poll. Josh and I also discussed O’Rourke’s candidacy in a Second Reading podcast this week.
 
 
Another set of developments this week to put a pin in for more extensive discussion as the situation continues to unfold: even as O’Rourke’s announcement focused attention on the top of the ticket, the churn continued in the Texas Legislature. The Texas GOP appeared ready to counter-program O'Rourke's rollout, as State Rep. Ryan Guillen switched parties Monday to run in the Republican primary in his newly drawn (and strongly Republican leaning) South Texas district. The announcement was staged at the Texas Capitol with Gov. Abbott and Speaker Dade Phelan present and beaming. The next day, Democratic representative Michelle Beckley announced she would be leaving the house to run for the Democratic nomination for Lt. Governor. By Thursday, three more Democrats had announced that they, too, were leaving the House: veteran Democratic members Joe Deshotel and Garnet Coleman announced they would not be seeking re-election, and Rep. Alex Dominguez will leave the lower chamber to run for the open seat vacated by the retiring Sen. Eddie Lucio, Jr.
That makes two dozen voluntary exits from the House (or more or less voluntary, given redistricting) before a single primary or general election contest, in addition to at least four Texas Senators due to exit from the upper House. The 88th Legislature will have a very different membership by the time they convene in January 2022 in the wake of a very stormy 87th. In October, 35% said they approved of the job the legislature was doing, while 40% disapproved, with the expected differences among groups.
I hope you all have an enjoyable weekend as the holiday season approaches. As always, keep in touch with feedback, ideas, and follow-up.
JH
Jim Henson
Executive Director, The Texas Politics Project
College of Liberal Arts / Department of Government
The University of Texas at Austin
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