Born To Run

I helped Ted Cruz win re-election in 2018. And it doesn’t get better than Beto.

- Lee Habeeb

LAST YEAR, AS TED CRUZ FACED a series of debates against his Democratic challenger, I was nervous. The Texas senator’s re-election race was getting increasingly tight, and as someone who has spent decades in conservative media, I tried to prepare him for the big fight.

After watching from the wings, I learned this: Beto O’Rourke is the toughest candidate I have ever prepped against and one of the most impressive I’ve ever seen. The media might not recognize his skills, but voters do—and will in 2020. In fact, being underestimated may be one of his biggest advantages.

For those who believe that he’s a lightweight, that his social media habits are not presidential material and that he doesn’t have enough experience or gravitas, I’m here to set you straight. What he managed in Texas in his race against Cruz was no fluke: O’Rourke got out the vote in ways none of us expected. His 4 million votes surpassed Hillary Clinton’s 3.87 million votes in 2016, which had been the highest total ever achieved in Texas by a Democrat.

In a state that’s redder than red light, a state where a Democrat hasn’t won a statewide election since Governor Ann Richards in 1990, O’Rourke lost by a slim margin: 50.9 percent to 48.3 percent. On that basis alone, he’s the presidential primary front-runner.

How will he connect in Michigan? And Wisconsin? And Iowa? He ran the table in Harris County, the largest county in Texas, so my guess is, he can succeed in all kinds of environments.

How do I know? I spent lots of time studying O’Rourke. I began by going to the game film. And my goodness, there is a lot. He live-streamed his life the way high school girls live-stream theirs. Beto drinking coffee. Beto bowling. Beto eating a hamburger. Beto riding a skateboard. Even Beto doing his laundry. But what most interested me were the live-streamed town halls.