Posted on 12/13/2017 9:47:20 PM PST by nickcarraway
Alabama's special election for U.S. Senate ended in an upset Tuesday night, as Democrat Doug Jones beat Republican Roy Moore in the deeply conservative state.
Texas has a Senate race in 2018, and it will likely be a different story.
Sen. Ted Cruz remains popular in the Lone Star State and has more than $6 million in his campaign coffers.
Cruz was first elected in 2012, pulling off a major upset in defeating then-Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst in a Republican primary runoff. Now, Democratic U.S. Rep. Beto O'Rourke, of El Paso, is hoping to pull off an upset of his own. He says he has a straight-forward approach for facing Cruz.
"It is not a sophisticated strategy, and it's as simple and really as old as democracy itself: getting out, getting after it, meeting the people that I want to represent and serve, going to their communities," O'Rourke said.
O'Rourke's campaign is well underway. He is traveling throughout the state and plans to hit all 254 Texas counties. But Cal Jillson, political science professor at Southern Methodist University, does not expect an Alabama-style upset here in Texas.
"Assuming Ted Cruz doesn't make any mistakes in this race, or no serious disqualifying mistakes, he is going to win in the mid-teens probably. O'Rourke is not going to defeat him unless Cruz stumbles," Jillson said.
Last spring, after it appeared O'Rourke was planning to run, Cruz spoke to NBC 5 about the upcoming campaign.
"There is an old phrase that there are two ways to run: scared and unopposed. Until I am the latter, I will continue to be the former, and so I am going to continue to work each and every day to earn the votes, to earn the support of men and women across the state," Cruz said.
On Wednesday, the senator's campaign said they were not concerned that what happened in Alabama would affect this race. His campaign is expected to go into high gear early in the new year.
Cruz has four Republican opponents but none are major names.
"I think what Alabama showed Texas Republican incumbents is that they have got to pay attention, that they have got to run hard, all the way through," Jillson said.
Allegations aside, Moore ran a bad race. If he had just stopped talking he would have won.
Blacks didn’t show up because of what did or didn’t happen to some White chick 40 years ago, those “family life” comments....
I was critical but it turns out the President was 100% right.
Hopefully the party will be united behind excellent Senator Ted Cruz and there won’t be any silly nonsense.
A Cruz loss will mean that the Dems won overwhelmingly in 2018, and would lead to a Trump impeachment in 2019.
I sure hope we’ve heard the last of Roy Moore. I’ve lived in Alabama a long time and he brings controversy everywhere he goes. A lot of times it was totally unnecessary and created a mess.
That makes a lot of us - many will blame other things but none of us really looked beyond what we liked about Moore and totally ignored the potential issues (outside the freaking attacks).
I remember being a bit dismayed when he pulled the gun out of his pocket at a rally to show he supported the 2nd - started to see a Barnum and Bailey attraction instead of the rock solid conservative we had been thinking about.
I just hope the lesson wasn’t too expensive. Many of us outsiders saw what we thought was a solid guy and ignored the “fluff”.
I wanted Mo Brooks in the initial election.
I was dubious of Moore for
A)Barely winning his prior races
B)Saying dumb stuff
But I was totally convinced it was a no-brainier to back Moore over Strange in the runoff. Moore was the most Trump Senate candidate ever I thought, the President was cowing to the party establishment I thought. Turns out Moore was more like Sharron Angle than Donald Trump, and the President was wiser than I in gauging the danger of actually losing.
I really think the dumb comments on “family life” in slavery times and other junk like that may have been the real kicker, I don’t think Blacks turned out like they did because of what did or didn’t happen to some White girls decades ago.
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