Deep in the Heart of Texas with Beto O'Rourke and Claire Dewar
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Hey folks, I'm Rick Wilson. Welcome back to the Lincoln Project Podcast. 70 days to go. Let's get to it. Your task will not be an easy one. Your enemy is well-trained, well-equipped, and battle-hardened. There is not a liberal America, any conservative America, but a state of America. Good night and good luck. Hey folks, welcome back to the Lincoln Project Podcast today. I am delighted to bring two guests to you today, one of whom you know, one of whom you should know. Beto O'Rourke,

is a former Senate candidate in the great state of Texas, now is working at the grassroots in Texas to build up the infrastructure and the systems and the ability to start winning in the hardest of hard states. Also joining us is Claire Dewar. She is a

current board member of the Lincoln Project, a good friend, also a Texan, hails out of Dallas. So we're going to have a Texas show today, folks. I am not a Texan, but I certainly am fascinated by the constant ebb and flow of our politics there. So I want to reach out first. Brother O'Rourke, I want to ask you the question, has Kamala Harris's entry into this race changed the chemistry in Texas meaningfully?

Absolutely. We have a group in Texas called Powered by People that has volunteers across the state whose sole mission is to find likely Democratic voters who are not currently registered, to get them registered, get them on the rolls, to stay in touch with them and turn them out. I'm

I'm seeing two things. One, a big influx of new volunteers, people reaching out after the elevation of Kamala Harris and this courageous step by President Biden who say, okay, I'm in, what do you want me to do? And we said, we want you to get trained as a volunteer deputy registrar. We want you to be out on the Texas Christian University campus, the Texas Southern University campus, the

University of Texas at El Paso campus, meet these young likely Democrats, get them on the rolls. They're stepping up in a big way. And then these young future voters that we're meeting are starting to pay attention to the race. Frankly, they were checked out before. They weren't excited about the options. It didn't matter if they voted or didn't vote, at least in their minds.

Now they really see a race that they care about, a candidate with whom they identify. And there's just this, you know, you can't measure it, but it's palpable energy, excitement, electricity that is out there. We feel that very strongly in Texas. And last thing, you and I have talked about this before, you know, Obama losing his reelection in Texas by 16 points, Hillary losing by nine in the next four-year period. And

And then Joe Biden losing by just five and a half in 2020, went from 16 to nine, five and a half. You know, I don't know that she's going to win our 40 electoral college votes. But if she doesn't, she's going to come closer than any Democratic nominee since Jimmy Carter in 76, the last Democrat to win Texas. So something is happening here. You add to that Colin Allred versus Ted Cruz, the biggest

Pick up opportunity for Democrats in the Senate, three of the most competitive House races in the country that could very well decide the balance of power in the House of Representatives. And this state is where it's at.

Okay, I'm going to jump in here real quick because I haven't seen the kind of energy since you ran in 2018. And people came out of the woodwork who had been complacent. And we are seeing lines the way that we saw them for you, Beto. And Beto got very, very, very, very close with a race that nobody really expected you to win. You were a guy that was in a different time zone than most of us in Texas.

And really coming from all the way from El Paso, which is almost as far as Chicago is from Dallas. And so we really did see...

You know, excitement. And we're seeing excitement again because of Kamala. I am thrilled. And Tim Walz. So I want to ask both of you. I'm going to start with the three house races that you mentioned, because I think those those are all getting a lot of attention. And they all do look like they're pickups where the extremism of the MAGA candidates has gotten pretty far to the point where even conservatives are like, OK, that's enough crazy for me.

Talk to us about those three races between you. I'll shine a spotlight on one of them in particular. It's actually our best pickup opportunity to go from red to blue in Texas. And it's Michelle Vallejo in the 15th Congressional District.

This is forever been a Democratic seat, changed hands in the last election after, Rick, as you well know, one of the most aggressive forms of voter suppression and voter intimidation ever passed by a state legislature following

the 65 Voting Rights Act made only possible by the 2013 Shelby versus Holder Supreme Court decision. Texas is now free to do whatever it wants to its voters. And it's really concentrated that suppression in South Texas. But Michelle Vallejo, the Democrat,

who is running, who lost relatively narrowly in 22. She is back. She's back stronger than ever. She's mobilizing a part of the electorate that really was left out before. I think the voter turnout in that 22 race was under 30%, if you can believe it or not, in a presidential election year where we're going to get close to or over 50%, which is about the average

in the Rio Grande Valley, I really think the odds are in her favor to pick that up. If you can defend the seat that we currently hold in Laredo, Texas, the other seat in the valley, in the Rio Grande Valley, currently held by Vicente Gonzalez,

That may very well determine who has a majority in the House right now. And so a lot of attention, a lot of interest, and a really exciting candidate in Michelle Vallejo in South Texas. And I just had Michelle Vallejo here in Colorado with a fundraiser. I had met her two years ago in Dallas.

actually hosted by Colin Allred, and we brought people to my home during the Texas Democratic Convention. She is impressive. She's been a small business owner. She lives in McAllen. Her race actually does gerrymander all the way up to the east side of almost Austin, Texas. So it's a long, skinny routing all the way from the border, many miles. But most of her voters are people she personally knows in McAllen, Texas.

and surrounding.

So one of the questions that, you know, I'm asked all the time is, you know, how do you beat Ted Cruz? And I know you came closer to beating Ted Cruz than either person. And you would have been a, I mean, I know it's all a lot of woulda, coulda, shoulda. But this is a guy who is so roundly disliked by everyone who actually knows him and sort of wins on that reflexive Republican vibe of, oh, it's Ted or the communists or whatever the imaginary demon of the day is.

I'm curious what you guys, both of you, because both of you know Ted Cruz. He seems like grumpier and angrier and less connected and less – I mean, he seems like he's more interested in doing his podcast than being a senator these days. Colin Allred has done such a good job of pointing that out, that –

Ted Cruz is in the United States Senate to serve Ted Cruz, and there's nothing else that really matters. He is the embodiment of personal ambition over country, over just about any other consideration. Most importantly, his constituents, which we all know he infamously abandoned.

during winter storm Uri in 2021. More than 700 Texans lost their lives, kids, moms and dads, grandparents frozen to death in their homes. His response, Ted Cruz, is to get on the first plane to Cancun to stay at the Ritz Carlton to abandon his dog. There's this sad picture of his dog at the screen door at his front house in Houston, Texas. That is Ted Cruz in a nutshell. When you add to that

His fundamental role in helping to incite a near insurrection and coup attempt on the 6th of January 2021 and to persist in that even after the attack on the Capitol, after people lost their lives,

You know, I think it casts him in a new light, much different than when we ran against him in 18. In 18, he was infamous for having shut down the government to try to repeal health care from Texans and Americans across the country unsuccessfully, but to the detriment of every other person.

that we care about, including programs for active duty service members and veterans. The guy was a clown and we really ran against him in that light. You know, now he's part of something, I think, much more ominous, much darker and a much graver threat

to this country. Colin represents the most perfect contrast that I can think of. Now, this guy is all about public service, is an incredibly bipartisan-oriented member of Congress. I think he has one of the highest bipartisan scores in the chamber. We'll work with anyone, anytime, anywhere to advance the agenda of this state.

and of our country. And to know Colin Allred is to really like Colin Allred. You cannot escape a meeting from him without having respect for the guy and liking the guy. The exact opposite is true for Ted Cruz. So more Colin Allred everywhere, all the time across the 254 counties of Texas. I think that contrast alone could be decisive when you run the kind of ads that I wish perhaps in hindsight we had run in 2018.

strong contrast ads and say, look, Texas is losing out on extraordinary opportunity by having Ted Cruz in the Senate. Imagine what we could do with a guy who builds bridges, gets things done, and is focused on public service.

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Let me tell you about my congressman who got elected in 2018, who ran against a guy that had been a 22 year veteran, but had basically moved to Florida. And Colin came out of really as a young, a 20 year old.

But he had been a Baylor Bear, the Baptist school in Waco, star of a football team. He went to work in the NFL and post-injury became a lawyer. Colin has a moderate lane, and I'm telling you, a lot.

of the Nikki Haley voters, and there were many of them, in Texas, they raised $10 million because they're never Trumpers. That lane is absolutely there for Colin. Colin is definitely a guy that has worked

Across the board, he got a VA hospital added into a suburb of Dallas, working with another congressional candidate who was another congressman who was a Republican. He also has been endorsed by the Chamber of Commerce, which is because he does work with businesses. So he has this lane that is really a lane that those that say,

That party that once was the Bush party that very significantly did not elect George P. Bush into the primary against a essentially convicted felon, should have been convicted felon, Ken Paxton. And they've been abandoned. And I think they see him calling a very safe,

moderate Democrat. He's going to work for the Democrats and he's going to understand what we need. But for example, one of his aspects you mentioned is down on the border. His grandfather was in Brownsville and worked for the Border Patrol, as I understand it, or in some position as a policeman. And he has the idea that Texas does want security.

on the border. So he has lanes that I think are really smart that are going to get him elected. And I just was with him on Saturday, and he is seeing polling that's indicating that this race is very wonderful. And as he said, I've never lost a race yet.

So for both of you, that is something that we've talked about this before. The idea, if you have a Democrat who can talk about the border in a way that works for Texas, not the national MAGA dialogue or whatever.

or the national more progressive dialogue but a texas discussion about the border isn't that really like one of the core issues on how you get democrats to to be able to win back a lot of that middle class and working class vote in texas i think so and and i think colin you know the more time he spends in cities like el paso where i'm talking to you from or brownsville as claire said uh colin's got family down there all along the border listening to those communities

where we understand it's not a black and white issue. There's not a solution that fits on a bumper sticker. It's an incredibly complex, important, vital relationship that we have with Mexico. It literally fuels the Texas economy by the hundreds of thousands of jobs in terms of U.S.-Mexico trade. For the local retail economy in these border communities, it's driven by the shoppers from Matamoros or Ciudad Juarez.

here in El Paso. And there's a true binational dynamic to our communities, families who live on both sides of the border, people who wake up in El Paso and go to work in Juarez or wake up in Juarez and go to school at the University of Texas at El Paso here on the US side. And then there's the very real challenge, which I think Colin has been excellent about naming, that we don't have full control of the border right now. We really do have a problem.

and that Democrats and Republicans alike must acknowledge that. But then Democrats and Republicans alike must come together to actually solve it. And here you have Colin Allred willing to work with the Democratic administration, but also hardcore right-wing Republicans in the Senate on border control and at least the beginning of reform to our immigration system bill that had a decent chance of passing before Donald Trump.

Trump decided that he wanted to run on the problem instead of allowing the solution to come forward. I think that's something to tie around Ted Cruz going forward. One of us is interested in the solution. One of us is banking on the problem. Don't you want to solve this, Texas? That's absolutely right. And, you know, he put out those sarcastic tweets after it went down. Yeah.

which I think you just bang the hell out of them on it. It's just so bad. I'm sorry, Claire, I interrupted you. No, I just believe that we do need to tie around the fact that Kamala is now saying, I will sign that bill the minute I become president, and that bill is actually –

really a Republican bill. It is one that leaves a lot on the table, but it's a little bit like the gun safety bill that was signed over a year ago, where the gun safety folks said, it's a step.

It's a step and we have to take it. And I do think there's many more things that we need to do. We need to deal with DACA. That's not in that bill. We need to deal with many other things. And, of course, I came down to the border because Beto had us standing outside of some of the facilities where they were separating men.

women and their children. And we were protesting together. And that was probably Beto and maybe 20. But the point being, maybe 22, the point being is that I do think that the Biden administration has been much more humane and

But we do have crossings. And I believe I believe a lot of the numbers are falling. And obviously, as a Democrat, I want to be humane with those that, as you say, Beto, if they travel 2000 miles with a child on their back, then we want to welcome them with compassion and

And frankly, it's, you know, the Christian Judeo rule of being a kind person to those that are here because they're so frightened in their home country. I also know that even like the governor of New York has been talking about and talked to me personally last summer about the fact that they have jobs that can be filled and

And we've got to do some work permits, which once again, that requires, you know, bipartisan work together because our economy benefits from those that want to immigrate.

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Visit BetterHelp.com to learn more. That's BetterHelp.com. One of the things that Trump promises, the big piece of red meat he throws out these days is, I'm going to do a mass deportation. And we all know that that mass deportation will primarily play out in five states. Texas, Florida, New Mexico, Arizona, and Nevada, maybe California, but that's a slightly different equation.

What does it do to the economy of those states? I mean, I could tell you what it does to the Florida economy, and the word is depression. What does it do to the Texas economy if Trump gets a mass deportation?

I think it is the most frightening, boneheaded, absolutely wrong impression, wrong idea. Most entrepreneurs, most immigrants are the best entrepreneurs that I know. And they run small businesses. They own homes.

They have got their kids educated. They drive a great big truck that they have bought from one of our dealers in our cities. They are absolutely the backbone of our economy. And we're not talking about, you know, migrant farmers. We're not talking about those that work in a gray area. These are people who run businesses.

Yeah, it runs the spectrum in the economy. I mean, as Claire said, it's entrepreneurs. It is. It's also farm workers. It's the people working the jobs in the slaughterhouses, the

the roofers, the carpenters, the folks out there in 108 degree Texas heat right now doing jobs that for whatever reason the folks born and raised in Texas are not willing to do. And that's probably a conversation we should have as well as is how we raise wages and working conditions so that more people born in this state actually want to take these jobs.

But for the time being, this economy in Texas is driven by immigrants, legal immigrants, legal permanent residents, U.S. citizens who were born in another country, and yes, to some degree, those who are undocumented. And I can tell you from traveling the 254 counties of this state, I've been to almost every small town in Texas once.

Most of them are losing population by significant percentages every decade. The only inputs, the only new population coming in are immigrants. These are the folks who are taking a chance on rural America, who are working these tough jobs in rural America, by the way, but who are also, to Claire's point, driving whatever savings they have into opening up a bakery, a restaurant, a laundromat,

Whatever it takes for Main Street, small town Texas to survive and to continue in to the next generation. You deport all of those folks who are helping our state to thrive and you will see the single greatest depression in Texas history.

Yeah, I think that is a really missed point by a lot of Republicans who are screaming about sealing up the border and deporting 20 million or 11 million or 9 million, whatever the number of the day is. I think they've failed to calculate that that's like setting an atomic bomb off in the middle of the economy. Yeah. Yeah.

We should also though acknowledge that the idea, much like building a wall, is incredibly alluring because for the average American, we've watched for decades, Democrats, Republicans talk about, elect me and I will fix this thing. If it's a Democrat, I'm going to get comprehensive immigration solution on the floor. If it's a Republican, I'm going to secure the border and make it safe and we'll stop all these illegal entries.

Neither party, of course, has been able to do it. Who knows all the reasons why? The cynical part of us wonders, maybe this is just a wonderful thing to run on and you want to perennially keep it as an unsolved issue. But when you have someone who says, you know what, I've got a solution. We're going to build a wall.

Folks are smart enough to know, well, I don't know that the wall is going to work. I don't know that that's actually what I want to see happen. But at least this guy has a solution I can understand and can get it done. So we shouldn't discount the power of this idea of like, look –

You know, Democrats have talked about it. Republicans have talked about it. I'm going to come in, round them all up and deport them. We're just going to deal with this once and for all. So I think the onus is on the Harris-Walls campaign to come up with something that is really compelling, that is genuinely honest. And I'd love to hear something like, listen,

The buck stops with us. Every administration, for whatever reason, has kicked this can down the road. The Paris Walls administration, in our first 100 days, we're going to make this a priority. We're going to bring urban and rural America together, coastal states, the Midwest, the South, Republicans and Democrats. And we're going to come up with an immigration plan that first and foremost serves the national interest, our economy.

our communities, our culture, our country, what has made us great in the first place. And we're also going to make sure that there's a safe, legal, and orderly way for people to come to this country. As Claire said, there are folks who traveled 2,000 miles with their kids. Our hearts go out to them, but we want them to do this the right way. We just need to make sure there is a right way for them to come into this country. And so I think if...

the Harris-Walls ticket leveled with the country in that way and gave us something to aspire to and hope for, I think that's pretty exciting. And not just for Democrats. And it's a beautiful contrast to mass deportations and camps set up in American cities and along the border. That's not who we are or should not be who we are. Here's this party that believes that

You know, the voters believe that the Republicans are good for the economy. This is a perfect example where they will decimate the economy. This is so anti-business. This is so completely, as I said before, boneheaded in the way that our economies would have a really hard time recovering. Yeah, I think that's I think that's one of the big things is that is that.

And the old Republican Party, the more Chamber of Commerce-y Republican Party, I mean, look, one of the politicians in my life I've met who was the most committed to trying to get a border deal, an immigration deal, was George W. Bush. He understood it. And his party had drifted away from him so far by the time that, you know, by the time we got there, it was just impossible. And now they're driven by a lot more of this

unsubtle racial coding about immigration, which concerns me that we're going to need to have a very compelling message to sell this to the fact that there's still going to be enough MAGA Republicans in the House and Senate who will never pass anything because they love the issue.

And, you know, Trump proved that. They love the issue more than didn't want to fix the issue. Well, you bring up George W. Bush, who lived across the street from me in Dallas, Texas. I grew up with many Republicans. I loved meeting Beto's dearly partner.

departed mother, Melissa, who he always said was a Republican. Rick, you come from a Republican background, so we all understand what it once was. That party is extinct. That party is not coming back in the way that they like to think they're going to be compassionate, you know, conservatives. The world of George W. Bush, who spoke Spanish,

who had an African-American secretary of state who he used to watch sports with and they were great buddies. The idea that we now have gotten away from that where the permission given to anti-Semitism, the permission given to being racially bigoted, and to say those things out loud,

by the old Republican Party that would have at least had a gentility to not say it out loud and not to allow everyone else to say it out loud is certainly not the way that I grew up watching Republicans who essentially were patriotic. They would be horrified by the fact that the Republicans are cozying up to Putin. They would be horrified by the fact that

that we are not allowing freedoms anymore for women. They are horrified. They would be horrified by, you know, old fashioned libertarians who even, you know, today believe in criminal justice, uh,

And don't believe that we should have all those regulations once you leave prison. It might count up to 80 things that you can't do. And obviously, Rick, you live in a state where they try to allow people off paper to vote again. By almost 75% of the vote, and Rhonda Santos just said, no, no.

And we're in a state where about three or four big, huge donors are controlling our house in Austin. They're controlling the governor's office.

They now have been eating their own by running candidates in the statehouse that are more right, that will vote for one subject being the vows or subject that the rural Republicans do not want. They don't have choice in schools. So there are things that are going to happen in our state because

because of the fact that people can give millions and millions and millions of dollars. And so we need to be able to have some stopgaps federally. We need to be able to have more people in Congress that will be elected in a way like Colin Allred was elected, where he'll be now elected as a senator, to understand that, you know, we've got to reach across the aisle. He and John Cornyn probably can have a really good relationship.

And they can probably figure out how to do things that are for taxes for their constituents instead of it being a showboat story like it is with Ted Cruz. Right, right. So one last question tonight. I'm a big believer in the political truism that one party states always doom themselves in the end. They always do something dumb eventually that really sort of breaks their connection with the voters.

Now, Texas is a pretty conservative state in a lot of ways, but between Ken Paxton and the governor and the rest of the sort of train wreck in the legislature, are you guys starting to see that as an impact with voters, that the corruption and the craziness is starting to impact people? Because, I mean, Paxton alone and any other state in the country would be in a jail cell right now, would be in a prison cell right this minute.

But I bet you think he was headed there and then Dan Patrick got that big chunk of money. For those unfamiliar, Ken Paxton, to whom Rick refers, is our attorney general in Texas, twice indicted under active FBI investigation for alleged bribery scheme brought not by Democrats, but by his own most senior staff within the attorney general's office.

He is impeached by the Texas House. He stands trial to be convicted in the Texas Senate. The judge who presides over that trial is Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, who on the eve of the trial receives a check for, Claire, I think a couple million dollars. It was three million, I think. Three million dollars. Right.

From those who are propping up Ken Paxton's defense and to Rick's point, in any other state, perhaps in any other country, that would be enough to just end this and put the guy in prison where he really belongs. But that money had a real impact and influence. And even though the Republican dominated House had impeached him, they could not find the votes to convict him in the Senate. And so to your point, yes, the hubris of

of these men and of this party who are now promoting a school voucher scam in Texas that would drain the coffers of the already very limited resources in our public schools

And it would have an impact in Dallas and Houston and El Paso and the big cities. But in rural Texas, you know, reliably read Republican rural Texas, there is no private school to which you could send your child with a out your tax credit. And so you'll see all the money leave your public school classroom, go to the kids in Dallas and

And you'll be none the richer for it. In fact, your community will be demonstrably poor at the end of the day. Democrats have this golden opportunity right now to seize on this level of corruption. And I call it corrupt because, as Claire pointed out, there are a few billionaires in Texas who are funding this Greg Abbott voucher scam in this state. You have the incompetence of the response to Winter Storm Uri, which wasn't just Ted Cruz fleeing to the Ritz-Carlton building.

And it was our state government unable to get the grid running, not for hours, but for days and in some cases for weeks. Lowest minimum wage in the country, lowest rate of insured in the country, highest prison population in the country and inflation.

the worst voter suppression and voter intimidation in America, which helps to explain Texas, not a red state so much as it is a non-voting state. And so much of the work that Claire and I have done together in this group called Powered by People is not only to register people who are eligible and to get them on the rolls, but importantly, and kind of think uniquely in the country, to

to stay in touch with these new voters on a one-to-one, person-to-person basis to help them navigate the arcane rules of the Texas election code to turn out and vote. And because we're not a nonprofit, we are a partisan organization, we also send these new voters candidates who reflect our values, that a woman should be able to make her own decisions

about her own body, that we should prioritize the lives of kids in the classroom over the interests of the NRA, that working people should be able to have just one job and be able to make ends meet in this state. Great public schools. The list goes on. Those people are out there. Getting them on the rolls, turning them out is a challenge. And that is what we are uniquely focused on right now in Texas. Yeah.

Voter registration on top of relational organizing is what Powered by People is uniquely doing. And it's brilliant. There's no one better than Beto to spread that word. He still is a hero. He's still a star. He still can attract lots and lots of folks.

And so if somebody says to me, what's Beto doing? I said, he is in a great lane right now. He's been writing books like you do, Rick. He's been teaching classes. He's been giving the message across our state that backs up what many people want to hear. And we're real proud of you, Beto.

Thank you, Claire. And Rick, you know Claire from her work with the Lincoln Project. She's also known to Democratic candidates across the country as one of these extraordinarily generous donors. But I'll tell you this, when we do a canvas going door to door in a given neighborhood, Claire is the first person there, the last person to leave. It wants to see if she can knock more doors than any other volunteer. She walks the talk and does the work. So we're in good company with Claire Stewart.

I love block walking. Thank you both, my friends. I appreciate you both. Keep fighting. Keep pushing. And we'll talk again very soon. Thanks so much, guys. Okay. Take care, everybody. Bye-bye. Adios. Good night and good luck.