O’Rourke has now lost back-to-back races for Senate, president, and governor.
Texas Democrat Beto O’Rourke lost his third major political race in six years on Tuesday, sending a combined $164 million in misguided donations down the drain.
Incumbent Republican governor Greg Abbott is expected to defeat O’Rourke, the Fox News decision desk projected just after 9 p.m. O’Rourke garnered 47 percent of the vote to Abbott’s 51.9 percent, with 39 percent of the vote in.
In the contest against Abbott, the former U.S. congressman spent a record $68 million as of the most recent filing deadline, according to the Texas Ethics Commission. No Democrat has ever collected more money to run for Texas governor than O’Rourke, the Houston Chronicle reported. He announced in mid October that he had raised $25.2 million just since July.
O’Rourke is notorious for his overflowing campaign coffers. After failing in his challenge against Republican senator Ted Cruz in 2018, despite investing a whopping $79 million in the misguided attempt, the political celebrity re-emerged in 2019 to compete for the Democratic presidential nomination.
On the first day of his subsequent presidential campaign, he garnered $6 million, a promising kickstart. But that financial support quickly evaporated by the third quarter of 2019, when he earned just $4.5 million in donations, ending the cycle with $3 million in cash on hand. He dropped out of the race in November 2019 after spending a total of $17 million.
The grand total spent across those three campaigns was about $164 million, though the figure is likely higher since it doesn’t include last-minute spending that occurred after the most recent filing deadline this cycle.
Spending 1,175 of the last 2,048 days of his life running for office, according to the Washington Post, O’Rourke is regarded by many Republicans and a growing cohort of Democrats as the political hopeful who won’t quit while he’s behind.
Despite his repeated flops, O’Rourke has received glowing coverage from progressive-leaning lifestyle magazines since his foray into big-league politics. In April 2019, Vanity Fair featured his presidential run with an extensive personal backstory, complete with kitschy vignettes of him flipping pancakes in the kitchen, playing music with his children, and dramatically posing in various settings on the campaign trail.
Speaking of his political ambitions, he told the magazine: “I want to be in it. Man, I’m just born to be in it.”
Later that year, O’Rourke was invited on The View to address progressive critics who argued the comments were indicative of his straight-white-male entitlement.
“I was attempting to say that I felt my calling was in public service — no one is born to be president of the United States of America. I have a lot to learn, and I still am,” O’Rourke said in an attempt at clarification.
However, Vanity Fair still continues to praise the party’s most expensive disappointment, headlining a May article, “We Don’t Deserve Beto O’Rourke.”
A pair of 2018 headlines from GQ, published during O’Rourke’s failed Senate bid, read: “Beto O’Rourke’s Politics of Optimism Are the Future of America” and “Beto O’Rourke Is the Type of Politician Ted Cruz Always Wished He Could Be.”
The glowing coverage helped drive out-of-state donations in all three races. As of July, roughly half of Beto’s fundraising dollars had come from out of state, according to the Texas GOP.
Prior to his defeat Tuesday night, O’Rourke was seeking to be the first Democratic governor elected in Texas in 27 years. In May, O’Rourke interrupted an Abbott press conference following the mass shooting in Uvalde to blame the governor for the tragedy. “This is on you,” he said in an empty gesture.
Days later, Vogue published a defense of O’Rourke’s absurd accusation in a column, “Beto O’Rourke Was Right to Interrupt Greg Abbott’s Post-Uvalde Press Conference.”
“We want the people we elect to represent us to pass sensible gun legislation that will make it harder for our children and their teachers to be slaughtered in their classrooms—and if they can’t or won’t, they shouldn’t enjoy the privilege of uninterrupted public appearances,” the author wrote. “If citizens have to live in fear of death, politicians should be prepared for a response.”
O’Rourke in 2019 declared he was in favor of confiscating AR-15s and AK-47s from law-abiding gun owners, an unpopular position in pro–Second Amendment, Republican-dominated Texas. However, in February, he backtracked, assuring Texans he had no intention of “taking anything from anyone.”
“What I want to make sure that we do is defend the Second Amendment,” he said. “I want to make sure that we protect our fellow Texans far better than we’re doing right now. And that we listen to law enforcement, which Greg Abbott refused to do.”