MIAMI, FL.- For the first time in 30 years, a Democrat is in a position to win the governorship of the second richest state, the second most populous and the second largest in the United States: Texas.
The battle is for everything: if the Democrat wins, one day he will play his luck to be president of this country.
The Republican may be within two years.
The spectacular thing about these elections, to be held on November 8, is that in Texas the Republicans usually win by almost 20 points, and this time they were confronted by a young politician (49) from El Paso, charismatic, who has had the audacity to challenge to his face the most radical exponents of Trump’s party.
It’s about Robert Beto O’Rourke, former business leader, former mayor of El Paso, former representative for the 16th district of Texas in the federal Congress from 2013 to 2019.
A month ago he was 15 points behind Governor Greg Abbott (65), who is running for re-election, and in four weeks the difference was reduced to five points.
Beto personally confronted Abbott at a press conference about the lack of gun control, after the massacre in Uvalde, where a guy killed 19 children and two teachers with an AR-15 rifle.
Before that O’Rourke already stood out as a figure for his courage.
In the last elections for senator, he challenged an important character of the Republican Party to take away his seat, Ted Cruz.
They called him out of place for such a disproportionate claim, but with a competitive campaign he attracted national attention and lost to a “sacred cow” of radical Republicanism by a narrow margin of 2.6 points, setting a record for votes for a Democrat in a midterm election in Texas.
Greg Abbott, the anti-Mexican governor of the Tea Party -the radical wing of the Republicans-, is seen as one of the two possible candidates of his party for the Presidency in 2024 if Donald Trump declines.
But Beto O’Rourke crossed him in his own home, Texas.
O’Rourke has progressive positions on different issues, such as gun control and the non-criminalization of abortion, while the current governor is an apologist for the free sale of weapons and has just promoted a 100-year prison sentence for women resort to abortion.
A Quinnipiac poll, conducted in Texas after the Uvalde massacre, indicates that Abbott has the support of 48 percent of voters, and O’Rourke reaches 43 percent of the preferences.
And according to the most recent survey – last week – from the University of Houston School of Public Affairs, Beto has not fallen and is on the heels of Governor Abbott, 49-44.
In December, Abbot’s lead was 15 points (52-37), according to the same polling house.
Beto is close, but he has two problems, Biden and migration from Mexico.
Just 31 percent of Texas voters approve of Biden’s handling of the border, in a mid-February poll Dallas Morning News and the University of Texas at Tyler.
O’Rourke has always been a defender of migration and a friend of Mexico, until reality put him between a rock and a hard place. And he doesn’t know how to move on an issue that is among the primary issues of the electorate.
Mexico was not a problem for Texas, more than the porosity of the border through which Guatemalans, Hondurans and Salvadorans enter. Now most of the illegal migrants detained by the Border Patrol are Mexicans.
They are not minor amounts, but 380,000 “encounters” with Mexicans in just under six months by the Border Patrol.
O’Rourke has been hesitant on the issue that a year or two ago was clear and categorical: regularize migrants and take advantage of their talents.
But reality changes when hundreds of thousands of Mexicans jump over the fence or cross the river.
It is not easy to defend the neighbor to the south when instead of going to Washington with a portfolio of investment guarantees and thus ensuring that Mexicans stay in Mexico, the country’s highest authority went to the White House to request more work visas. for Mexicans… in the United States.
Beto O’Rourke can win, but the border issue hurts him.
There Abbott convinces with his Trumpian radicalism: construction of more border wall and thousands of members of the Texas National Guard on the border with Mexico.
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