Lots of Texas Democrat Voters Want Beto O'Rourke to Run for Senate Instead
Democratic voters in Texas might be more politically savvy than one of their actual congressmen, presidential candidate Beto O'Rourke. A new poll from Quinnipiac University finds that an overwhelming majority of respondents would rather O'Rourke run to replace Republican senator John Cornyn in 2020. Per the Houston Chronicle:
"Sixty percent of about 400 Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters polled by a Quinnipiac University said they would prefer to see a O’Rourke take on Cornyn. The poll surveyed 1,159 voters overall and had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.4 percentage points overall and plus or minus 5.8 percentage points for Democrats and Democratic-leaners."
If the eventual Democratic nominee does beat Donald Trump in the general election, they'll be severely hamstrung by a hostile, Mitch McConnell-led Republican Senate. The majority leader has made it clear that he's willing to break all kinds of norms to cement GOP power and steal Supreme Court seats, and there's no reason to assume he'd become more cooperative just because his party lost the White House. Unfortunately, many Democrats with the juice and name-recognition to run serious Senate campaigns have chosen instead to jump into the presidential race. O'Rourke narrowly lost to incumbent senator Ted Cruz in 2018, but he performed extremely well for a Democrat in deep-red Texas, and if he ran again in 2020 he would be up against the immensely unpopular Cornyn.
And O'Rourke isn't polling very strongly in the presidential primary in Texas, either. According to Quinnipiac, former vice president Joe Biden sits comfortably at the top of the polls with 30 percent support from Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters, while O'Rourke and Vermont senator Bernie Sanders are on top of each other with 16 and 15 percent respectively. That doesn't necessarily spell doom for O'Rourke though, since Texas has open primaries, meaning that voters don't have to register with a party to vote in that party's primary. But O'Rourke is in bad shape if he's a distant second among his party even in his home state.
Originally Appeared on GQ
