Texas has the potential to elect a Democratic Senator for the first time in 24 years. Texas has the longest losing streak in the entire country. The last Democratic Senator, Bob Krueger, was defeated in 1993. Since then it has been straight Republican, all the way to our current Senators, John Cornyn and Ted Cruz. Ted Cruz is up for re-election this November where he will be facing off against U.S Representative Beto O'Rourke.
There has been a lot of talk about a blue wave in America and specifically Texas. Over 40 state legislators have lost their seats to Republicans since Trump has taken office, with historic elections such as Doug Jones' election in Alabama to the Senate and Danica Roem to the statehouse in Virginia. With surprising results like these, even some Republicans such as Brendan Steinhauser are saying "this could very well be a good year for Democrats".
This wave can become a real possibility when you look at the Latino's rising population in Texas and how sharply the candidates' platforms differ. Beto O'Rourke is bilingual, and he is very supportive of immigrants, especially the Dreamers. He wants to join the rest of the industrialized world and implement universal healthcare. O'Rourke has also pledged to take no money from PACs or any interest groups. Even with that pledge, he has out raised Ted Cruz who relies on traditional sources of campaign money. Beto's grassroots campaign has raised over $6.7 million, which is more than double than Cruz has raised.
Ted Cruz is most famous for the 2013 government shutdown and his 21-hour filibuster to defund the Affordable Care Act, where he read Dr. Seuss' Green Eggs and Ham. Cruz is for a strong border and supports the President's idea of a wall along the Mexico/US border. He has received $1 million from Wall Street, $360,000 from the NRA, and is backed by the billionaire Mercers. Ted Cruz is not the most popular Senator. Senator Lindsey Graham noted "if you killed Ted Cruz on the floor of the Senate, and the trial was in the Senate, nobody would convict you".Beto and Cruz both won their parties primaries in 2018. The Democratic primary vote was a huge breakthrough. The Democrats had twice the number of voters than in 2014, with over 1 million voters showing up to the polls. This was the highest amount in 16 years, but the Democrats were still outnumbered by the Republicans who had 1.5 million voters. Ted Cruz also had twice as many votes as O'Rourke did. However, this can largely be attributed to Cruz being the incumbent and many Texans not knowing O'Rourke. The race for the seat is now extremely close, as Quinnipiac University published a poll that had Cruz beating O'Rourke by only 3%, which is in the margin of error. Beto accomplished all this without any TV ads. Instead, he has been traveling Texas, meeting as many of his (possibly) future constituents as possible in person.
The 2018 senatorial race is up in the air at this point. Beto's challenge is to get enough people to know him and want him in the Senate more so than Cruz convincing Texans that he is still right for the job. It is far too close to predict a winner at this time but whichever candidate gets more of its voters out will emerge victorious.
