Beto O’Rourke just announced he’s running for Governor of Texas in 2022.
There’s just one problem.
Beto has almost zero chance of actually winning the race, and his looming defeat in the Lone Star State could herald the end of his political career.
After narrowly losing the 2018 Senate race in Texas by a little over 2 points, Beto O’Rourke made it official this past week when he announced he would be running for Governor of Texas in 2022.
“Former congressman, Democratic presidential candidate, and Senate candidate Beto O’Rourke announced Monday that he is running for governor of Texas, setting himself up for a potential 2022 general election battle with incumbent Republican Gov. Greg Abbott,” reports Fox News.
On paper, Beto seems to be a strong candidate for Democrats to run in Texas next year.
But Texas ended up voting for Trump by over 5 points in 2020, and that was with record turnout.
And with Biden in the White House, the 2022 midterm elections are shaping up to be a huge backlash against Democrats across the country. Texas will likely be no exception to that rule.
“A day ahead of O’Rourke’s announcement, Abbott’s reelection campaign gave a taste of things to come in a statewide digital ad in Texas that targets O’Rourke over his stance on the combustible issues of immigration and border security. The spot starts with a clip of O’Rourke in 2019, during his presidential campaign, saying ‘we don’t need any walls to solve a problem that we do not have.’,” adds Fox News.
Beto’s comments on the border will almost certainly come back to haunt him.
With just 22% of Texans supporting Joe Biden’s handling of the border, it could end up dooming his campaign before it even gets off the ground.
But what’s even more disastrous for Beto is the fact that Biden’s own approval rating is cratering across the country, and he’s even underwater with Hispanics in Texas.
Hispanic voters in particular seem to be on the cusp of a major realignment in Texas. Many Hispanic-majority counties in southern Texas along the Rio Grande Valley swung so hard to the right in 2020 that Trump even flipped Zapata County, which had not voted for any Republican for President since 1920.
These trends played out across southern Texas, with many precincts swinging over 30 points to the right between 2016 and 2020.
And there’s no sign that the political realignment in the region is coming to an end any time soon.
This, combined with a swing in Texas’ suburbs around San Antonio, Houston, and Dallas, will likely mean that Texas remains a red state in 2022.
“Republicans appear to have a significant advantage going into the 2022 Texas governor race. The state favored former President Donald Trump by about six percentage points in the 2020 election, and since then Democrats have struggled, between President Biden’s low approval ratings Terry McAuliffe’s loss in the Virginia gubernatorial election, and New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy’s extremely narrow victory in a race that was not expected to be close,” concludes Fox News.