The speculation increases as O’Rourke announces a voter registration drive effort he’ll take across Texas for next years Texas Governor election….
The hustle rings just as it did when he was in college, touring the country in a punk band. It still shapes a chunk of his identity like it did when he ran, unsuccessfully, for both the U.S. Senate in 2018 and the presidency in 2020. And it energizes O’Rourke with a youthfulness that makes state Democratic Party leaders believe he’s their guy.
“If anybody could beat Abbott, he could beat him,” chairman Gilberto Hinojosa told the Associated Press last month.
Right now, that “anybody” is dizzying himself trying to drive up the number of people at the polls.
“We’ve been… I don’t know… in 16 or 17 different cities over the last 13 days?” O’Rourke tells PEOPLE, after pausing to ask for music recommendations ahead of the drive to his next rally. “As dire as the situation is, it’s been really encouraging how many people are coming out, and getting engaged, and then committing to taking action.”
“I’m in the middle of all that right now,” he adds.
Taking the lead from the likes of Stacey Abrams and Michelle Obama in recent years, O’Rourke has spent “the better part of the last two years” rallying up volunteers to help register others to vote.
In 2020, he says his Powered by People organization registered 196,000 Texans to vote – just shy of the roughly 215,000 he lost to Sen. Ted Cruz in 2018….
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O’Rourke may very well be the state Democratic Party’s preferred face of its 2022 efforts to oust Abbott, over potential competitors like fellow 2020 candidate Julian Castro and actor Matthew McConaughey.
But right now, O’Rourke’s attention is firmly planted on making Texas “a truly competitive state” by encouraging more people to vote and urging currently elected officials to pass laws making it easier for them to do so…
Note…
Hmmmm?
First get the sign-ups….
Then run?
Would be a tough hill to climb cause Democrats do NOT do good in that state…
image…Gary Miller/Getty