Caroline Downey of National Review Online tallies the damage for Democrats from Beto O’Rourke’s latest high-profile defeat.
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. … 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.
