Late in the afternoon of the last Friday in May, as the temperature soared over 100F (38C), the Democratic nominee for Senate in Texas was going door to door. There were not many doors to knock on: Mentone, in Loving county in the far west of the state, is home to perhaps two dozen people. But Beto O’Rourke had come as part of a pledge to visit all 254 counties, in his bid to unseat the Republican Ted Cruz.
Unanimously, political analysts say the 45-year-old is a long-shot to reach the Senate. Cruz is a conservative leader who finished second to Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential primary. Texas hasn’t sent a Democrat to the Senate since Lloyd Bentsen in 1988, when O’Rourke was in high school. The party hasn’t won a statewide race since 1994.
Some recent polls have given O’Rourke hope, showing Cruz with a single-digit lead in a state where Republicans have grown accustomed to wins of 15 points or more. However, a Quinnipiac Poll released on Wednesday showed Cruz 11 points ahead.
In Mentone, O’Rourke got no answer at his first stop. But Stan Moore, a genial 70-year-old, invited O’Rourke inside a modest home he shares with his wife Ray, a Loving county native.
“Well, I want to say something first,” Moore said with a smile. “I’m a Republican.”
“That’s OK, there’s no obligation to vote for us,” said O’Rourke, a congressman from El Paso.
What followed was an idealized – and nearly extinct – version of American politics. Candidate and voter had a respectful conversation about issues both global and hyper-local.
Moore explained his family political history. It was a story recognizable to many Texans and it helped explain why O’Rourke is fighting an uphill battle: “My parents grew up Democrats. They loved [Franklin] Roosevelt, you know. I was a Democrat until in my early 30s and I just began to feel like what I wanted to do was more toward the Republican side.”
They discussed the energy boom, which has swelled Loving county’s population from 82 in the 2010 census to an estimated 139 in 2017. (The county covers 677 sq miles, slightly larger than London.)
When O’Rourke asked about national issues that concern him, Moore said: “Well, you know, the immigration thing is an issue. I wish something could be done to make things safer and let people who are good people come over, you know. And I know that’s a hard issue.”
Candidate and voter spent five minutes talking about the US-Mexico border and how to get things done. O’Rourke is a fierce critic of Trump’s border and immigration policies; Moore agrees with the president that more needs to be done to secure the border. But voices were never raised and both men smiled throughout.
As the candidate prepared to leave, Moore talked about media coverage he had seen of a recent town hall meeting in Amarillo.
“When I saw you on TV the other day,” he said, “to be honest with you, I was very impressed with you. As soon as I saw you and heard you speak on TV, I thought, ‘Man, that guy’s a sharp guy.’”
Moore and O’Rourke shook hands and parted. No commitment for a vote was asked for or given. The candidate spent another 30 minutes in Mentone, talking with the owners of a food truck and convenience store who are doing pretty good business serving the men who work in the energy fields. Then O’Rourke drove off, headed for a rare weekend with his wife Amy and their three children.
‘It’s the only way to get to know the people you want to represent’
O’Rourke is running a campaign that is part 21st-century and part 19th. He has perhaps the most sophisticated digital political operation of the 2018 midterms, which has helped him raise a surprising $13m so far. He’s also running a retail campaign in a state with 28 million people and almost 270,000 square miles. As part of his pledge to visit every county, he has held hundreds of town hall meetings.
Before coming to Loving county, O’Rourke held town halls for about 30 people in Hudspeth county and about 50 in Culberson. The stops were numbers 251, 252 and 253. Between them, the three counties cover an area larger than Wales but hold fewer than 6,000 people. Loving county is Texas’ least populated county and has the second-fewest residents of any in the US, ahead of only Kalawao county in Hawaii.
O’Rourke will complete his 254-county tour on 9 June, with a visit to Cooke county in the north of the state.
Loving is the extreme example of the challenges of old-style campaigning in Texas. Locals tell of Cruz’s campaign effort ahead of the Republican primary in March, which he won easily. His campaign RV rolled into Mentone and parked outside the courthouse. A couple of aides popped out, snapped a picture, jumped back in and rumbled away.
Loving residents, of whom 106 are currently registered to vote, cast four ballots for Hillary Clinton in 2016 – her lowest vote total in any US county. On his visit, O’Rourke spoke to two, maybe three voters and spent eight hours on the road. But it was not an entirely quixotic quest – as he traveled across west Texas, he conducted multiple Facebook Live streams, each drawing thousands of viewers.
O’Rourke said his pledge to visit all 254 counties is no gimmick, though he has also acknowledged that he will spend the final six months of the campaign focusing on the most populous areas. He said that coming from El Paso, on the far western edge of the state and in a different time zone than the rest of Texas, makes him appreciate towns and cities that often are ignored by politicians.
“It’s the only way I can think of to get to know the people you want to represent and understand what’s most exciting to them and what they’re most concerned about,” he said.
In Texas, a 254-county strategy means mostly going to heavily Republican areas. O’Rourke likes to talk about his visits to Lubbock, a west Texas county where Trump racked up 66% of the vote and Cruz won 69% in his first Senate race, four years earlier. O’Rourke and his family spent last Fourth of July marching in Lubbock’s Fourth of July parade. Each time he returns, he said, his town hall crowds grow larger.
“Last time,” he said, “Sunday night a month ago, six weeks ago, a thousand people came out to that town hall … it works but as you can see, it’s time intensive, travel intensive. But it is worth it.”