Former U.S. Representative and one-time presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke has been on the move around Texas over the last few weeks.
The El Pasoan has been what he calls a listening tour, meeting up with Texans for town halls in cities and towns from Houston to Amarillo, Fort Worth to Laredo. He’s shared the stage with Democratic political powerhouses, including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders.
He said the purpose of this tour was to bring people together across differences.
“We’re in a very important, very fraught moment in Texas and in this country,” he said. “These town halls are an opportunity to bring people together to hear what’s going on in their lives, to listen to one another and then to commit ourselves to the action necessary to save our country.”
O’Rourke said the recent increase of political violence — including the murder of state lawmaker and her husband in Minnesota — made these town halls feel even more relevant to the current political moment.
“All of us feel the threat right now,” he said. “We can either cower and hide and hope that it’s gonna go away or that someone will ride to our rescue and save us, or we can get out there and do the work necessary and ensure that we peacefully, nonviolently and democratically resolve our differences, come to consensus and move forward as a country.”
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O’Rourke said he feels the urgency in this mission, which he doesn’t feel can wait until the midterm elections in 2026.
“We’ve got to be doing the work now,” he said. “These town halls that we’re holding all across the state – that’s part of it, because this whole democratic process is so vanishingly rare across the planet today. It’s the exception in the rule of human history over the last 10,000 years. What we have is incredibly precious and we ignore it or lose it at our peril.”
Talking to residents across the state, O’Rourke said he’s heard a little bit of everything — from concerns about due process and immigration raids to questions about how individuals can help those in need.
“There’s a lot of fear, there’s lot of anxiety, but above and beyond all that – and this is what leaves me more optimistic and more hopeful than I have ever been – are the people of Texas who are showing up at these town hall meetings because they’re not resigned to this being our permanent future and fate,” he said.
“They’re going to do what they can with what they’ve have to make sure that we overcome this… The people of Texas will not be found wanting at this moment of truth.”
O’Rourke also had some criticism for the Democratic Party, saying the party can be lulled into complacency that messaging is enough to make progress on left-wing political goals.
“Democrats took places like the Rio Grande Valley for granted, and it bit them on the ass,” he said. “They totally wrote off places like the High Plains or rural Texas. And it’s no wonder that we don’t pass 30% when we have a Democrat on the ballot in those places.
You’ve got to show up everywhere for everyone, write nobody off, take no one for granted. And when Democrats do that, Democrats will win.”
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Echoing other statements he’s made recently, O’Rourke did not commit to a run for office anytime soon.
“What I am committing to doing is being as useful and helpful as I can possibly be,” he said. “And I may run for office if that continues this work of being helpful, of being useful.
I just want to do what I can that is going to provide the greatest possible positive impact on this state in whatever capacity it is. So I’m just remaining open to all options and, in the meantime, just getting the work done.”
