Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott has received re-election to a 3rd time period, NBC Information tasks, soundly defeating a problem from Democrat Beto O’Rourke.
At one level, early within the cycle, pundits had regarded the competition as one of many extra attention-grabbing matchups within the nation, with O’Rourke brandishing a lot of the identical gusto he employed 4 years earlier, when he almost knocked out a unique Texas conservative, Sen. Ted Cruz.
In Could, O’Rourke crashed an Abbott information convention the day after a taking pictures at an elementary faculty in Uvalde, Texas, left 19 kids and two lecturers lifeless, approaching the stage accountable Abbott’s pro-gun insurance policies earlier than police escorted him out. Over the summer season, he launched a 5,600-mile “Drive for Texas.”
However this time round, O’Rourke’s marketing campaign by no means caught on.
Polls in latest months had persistently proven Abbott main; a latest RealClearPolitics common of surveys earlier than the election confirmed him forward by greater than 8 share factors.
O’Rourke had at all times confronted an uphill climb. Texas hasn’t elected a Democratic governor in additional than three a long time, Abbott is a formidable fundraiser and Texas Republicans have constructed inroads with Latino voters.
O’Rourke’s supporters had claimed {that a} trio of crises — the failure of the state’s energy grid in 2021, the lack of abortion rights and the tragedy in Uvalde — had made Abbott weak in solidly crimson Texas.
On the solely televised debate of the race, in September, O’Rourke tried to grab on these three matters, in addition to Abbott’s extremely publicized program of busing migrants from Texas to Washington, D.C., and different Democratic-run cities.
The optimism over his possibilities, nevertheless, proved to be wishful considering. After polls for a quick interval over the summer season confirmed the race narrowing, surveys then started exhibiting Abbott pulling forward.
The loss on Tuesday by O’Rourke, a former member of Congress, is the third time in 4 years that he’s failed at profitable increased workplace, following his shut however unsuccessful Senate bid in 2018 and a run within the 2020 Democratic presidential major.
