Former congressman and former Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke announced Monday that he aspires to unseat the governor of Texas, Republican Greg Abbott, in the 2022 elections.
“Together, we can overcome the small and divisive politics that we see in Texas today and return to the big and bold vision that used to define Texas. A Texas big enough for everyone,” he said in his candidacy announcement, posted on Twitter.
These ideals would be the opposite of Abbott’s “petty and divisive” policies, as defined in an interview published Monday by “The Texas Tribune”.
The Democrat, born in the border city of El Paso and fluent in Spanish, said in the video in which he announced the start of his campaign that “those who were elected to serve and care have abandoned Texans.”
The congressman for Texas between 2013 and 2019 jumped into national politics in 2018 when he tried unsuccessfully to wrest his Senate seat from Republican Senator Ted Cruz.
Despite the defeat, the tightness of the final result in a traditionally conservative state like Texas made him one of the most popular politicians in the country.
That push, and his skillful use of social networks, allowed him to receive millionaire contributions to his campaign as a candidate for the Democratic candidacy for the White House, although he was finally one of the first to withdraw, in 2019, in a primary that won the current president, Joe Biden.
There is less than a month to go before the deadline for the registration of candidacies for the Texas primaries, which are held on March 1, 2022, while the elections to the Governor’s Office will be held on November 8.
According to the most recent University of Texas opinion poll, Abbott’s popularity has fallen to its lowest level, with 46% sympathy, but the current governor still leads O’Rourke by nine percentage points.