Texas’ incumbent Republican Gov. Greg Abbott might be dealing with his closest Democratic challenger ever, former Rep. Beto O’Rourke, the one-time Democratic star who’s risking his second straight election statewide loss in Texas. 

Early voting ended Friday, with nearly 4.8 million Texans voting earlier than Election Day, far fewer than the almost 9 million who voted early in 2020, a presidential election yr.

Former President Donald Trump, who received the state twice, visited South Texas to assist drive up voter participation and marketing campaign for Republicans. He additionally hit the deep-red twenty seventh Congressional District, though his rally was in Nueces County, which he received twice, however O’Rourke carried it in 2018. Abbott skipped the rally, however Trump lavished reward on him anyway, calling him a “fantastic man” and saying O’Rourke needed to “abolish weapons, God and oil.” 

Abbott is looking for a 3rd time period, whereas O’Rourke, his Democratic challenger,is hoping to turn out to be the primary Democrat to be elected statewide in Texas since 1994, when George W. Bush received the governor’s race in opposition to Ann Richards. 

Abbott has opened up a double-digit lead in two current polls, coming after months of what gave the impression to be a tightening race. Each O’Rourke and Abbott have raised large sums of cash, with over $100 million raised this yr alone. 

He was first elected in 2014 by 20 factors and received reelection in 2018 by 13 factors – the identical yr as O’Rourke’s failed Senate run. Abbott has been talked about as a potential presidential contender, too,  following within the footsteps of his predecessors, Bush and former Gov. Rick Perry. 

Regardless of his constant lead within the polls, Abbott hasn’t taken this election flippantly, particularly given O’Rourke’s robust run for Senate in 2018 and President Joe Biden’s relative success, in comparison with any Democratic presidential candidate since Invoice Clinton in 1996, shedding to Trump by below 6 factors. 

O’Rourke spent the summer season touring the state as a part of a “Drive for Texas,” hitting 70 cities over round 50 days. After a quick hiccup on the finish – hospitalization and a break from the highway – he ended up crisscrossing the state and hitting Republican areas (Alpine in West Texas and Lockhart in central Texas), swing areas (the Rio Grande Valley and the Dallas suburbs), the various cities (Houston and San Antonio) and the Democratic coronary heart of Texas, Austin. 

O’Rourke wants all of them to win: Voters of shade, Republican Texans to flip, suburban swing voters, youth voters and all of the true blue Texas Democrats he can get. He introduced out two larger-than-life Texas Democrats, Cecile Richards, the daughter of the late Texas Gov. Ann Richards, and Luci Baines Johnson, the daughter of the late President Lyndon Johnson to marketing campaign with him in Austin. 

O’Rourke informed CBS Information in an interview in September that whereas he was out on the highway, he noticed “so many individuals demanding change – they usually’re not typing it out on Twitter, or yelling it on the TV.” 

“They’re displaying up at our occasions after which signing up, to go knock on doorways and meet voters and win this election in order that we will overcome these challenges,” he added. On his social media feeds, O’Rourke usually highlights Trump supporters or Republicans who’ve determined to vote for him – and stated within the interview that when he was in El Campo, a Trump supporter requested him to signal a MAGA hat. 

However as O’Rourke hit the highway this summer season to journey to 70 cities all through the state, at lots of his stops, he was greeted by protesters and hecklers. At his final cease of that journey in Lockhart, Texas, at first of September, a gaggle of protesters stated they think about themselves the “three Musketeers” who protest O’Rourke. 

“He is not welcome, particularly in Bastrop,” stated Monica Carson, the legislative chair of the Misplaced Pines Republican ladies and one of many protesters on the Lockhart occasion. Former President Donald Trump carried Bastrop County by greater than 13 factors in 2020. “There’s so many individuals transferring right here from Democratic states which can be attempting to show Texas blue. And us Texans are standing up [against] it.”

In 2018, O’Rourke appealed to donors outdoors Texas borders, bringing in a file $80 million over the course of the race and finally touchdown greater than 4 million votes – greater than 2 million greater than the final Democratic candidate for Senate within the state. However he nonetheless fell nearly 3 factors wanting toppling Cruz. 

It has been a rocky highway since then. O’Rourke launched a presidential bid that first garnered large consideration – a Self-importance Honest cowl and a then-record-breaking first-day fundraising haul of over $6 million – however he dropped out in Nov. 2019 earlier than any votes had been forged after going to the left on weapons. Solely a month later, the Texas Home Democratic Marketing campaign Committee leaked suggested candidates to not seem with him, displaying his potential vulnerability even in his personal state. 

Regardless of his continued energy within the state, Abbott has been making ready for O’Rourke, filling a warfare chest of $55 million in June 2021, six months earlier than O’Rourke even introduced he can be operating. 

However he has moved additional to the precise up to now eight years, launching a Nationwide Guard mission alongside the border referred to as Operation Lone Star, loosening gun legal guidelines, signing a restrictive abortion regulation in 2021 – forward of the Supreme Courtroom resolution overturning Roe – and pushing via a voter regulation that led to Democrats fleeing the state. 

Then there was the 2021 Texas freeze, which led to a dayslong energy outage all through a lot of the state, exposing the state’s shaky energy grid. Based on a Dec. 2021 report by the Texas Division of Well being Companies, 246 deaths had been blamed on the storm, making it one of many state’s worst pure disasters in historical past. 

The criticism of Abbott’s response to the freeze stood in stark distinction to the reward he obtained for the response to Hurricane Harvey, which slammed the Gulf Coast with days of rain in 2017. Days after the hurricane hit close to Corpus Christi as a Class 4 storm, Abbott elevated a reasonable Democrat, Texas A&M College chancellor John Sharp, to steer the newly-formed Governor’s Fee to Rebuild Texas. The state’s high emergency administration official praised Abbott as being “24/7” to the Texas Tribune, and Trump praised Abbott when he got here right down to Corpus shortly after the hurricane hit. 

When O’Rourke launched his bid for governor, he hit Abbott arduous over the grid failure – and continued via a February 2022 storm when Abbott stated “nobody can assure” the facility would keep on. 

However that slip did not evaluate with what was to come back from Abbott. On Could 24, an 18-year-old gunman opened fireplace at an elementary faculty in Uvalde, Texas, killing 19 youngsters and two academics earlier than being shot and killed by a Border Patrol officer who responded. At a press convention with native and state officers in Uvalde the day after the taking pictures, Abbott stated the taking pictures “may have been worse” if not for the response of regulation enforcement.

Within the days and weeks following the taking pictures, native authorities supplied shifting – and infrequently conflicting – accounts of what occurred. Abbott was compelled to backtrack, stated he’d been “misled” concerning the taking pictures, and though O’Rourke and different Democrats referred to as for Abbott to name a particular session of the Legislature to research, Abbott as an alternative convened a committee of three legislators to conduct a probe. 

Forward of the report’s launch, surveillance video of the taking pictures was leaked that confirmed officers ready within the hallway for 77 minutes – in some instances, even because the screams of youngsters might be heard. The committee’s report discovered that 376 regulation enforcement officers in whole responded to the taking pictures, and stated there had been “systemic failures and egregiously poor resolution making.”

On Could 25, O’Rourke crashed Abbott’s press convention and confronted him over gun legal guidelines, telling him “you might be doing nothing” and blasted him for not appearing after different lethal mass shootings within the state. In typical O’Rourke style, the video went viral and led to a fundraising blitz. 

A darkish cash group referred to as “Coulda Been Worse” has taken out thousands and thousands in commercials concentrating on Abbott and different Republicans, together with Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Lawyer Normal Ken Paxton. 

In Austin two weeks after the taking pictures, Imelda Garza, who stated she was a gun proprietor and a Republican, of close by Georgetown stated she messaged a pal and recalled that after seeing O’Rourke confront Abbott. Garza stated she is from South Texas and got here from a household of gun house owners, however she stated the taking pictures and the response was “outrageous.” 

“All he was attempting to do was rise up for the kids of Texas, and if Texas modifications, perhaps we will change extra states and extra hearts,” she stated about O’Rourke on the press convention. 

It is the kind of voter O’Rourke wants, and he is aware of it O’Rourke has usually touted his forays into the redder components of the state, even kicking off his highway journey this summer season in rural Texas, which carried Cruz to victory in 2018 with a greater than 50-point benefit. 

As he acquired again on the marketing campaign path in Laredo on the finish of August, O’Rourke stated “for us to make up this floor proper now, we want you all. It is not going to be the Democratic occasion, it is not going to be the candidates by themselves. It is not going to be some magical sum of money or mysterious message that we give you ourselves in a spotlight group, it will be the individuals of this group, on this room proper now, who’ve been written out of this democracy earlier than.” 

One in all O’Rourke’s frequent strains on the marketing campaign path is “it doesn’t matter, no me importa, when you’re a Republican or a Democrat, or an unbiased” so long as you are there to hear.

However at one city corridor in Mineral Wells, Texas – positioned about 50 miles from Fort Value, straddling the border of the crimson Texas Panhandle – O’Rourke misplaced his cool on a hecker who laughed as he talked concerning the Uvalde taking pictures. “It could be humorous to you, motherf*****, however it’s not humorous to me,” O’Rourke stated because the room erupted in cheers. 

O’Rourke informed CBS Information within the Sept. interview that he feels “unhealthy for them, their candidate will not present up. They’re by no means seen Greg Abbott.”

“They’re each bit as necessary as each different Texan, whether or not they help me, or oppose me,” O’Rourke stated. “And what I’ve usually discovered is that after we invite these protesters in, they have very considerate questions, they’ve issues which can be the identical ones, frankly, that I’ve concerning the path of this state.”

Abbott has tried to tie O’Rourke to rising crime and the Biden administration, particularly on immigration and the financial system. A CBS Information ballot from June had gasoline costs, inflation and the financial system ranked because the three most necessary points to Texans. Immigration and crime weren’t listed, though Abbott has run adverts accusing O’Rourke of supporting the “defund the police” motion. 

In April, Abbott began busing migrants from Texas to Washington, D.C., saying he was “going to take the border” to the Biden administration. He adopted up by sending migrants to the Democrat-run cities of New York and Chicago. Mayors Muriel Browser of D.C. and Eric Adams of New York have criticized the transfer, and Adams has alleged Abbott by no means contacted him earlier than sending migrants to town. 

Whereas O’Rourke has on the path decried this system as a “stunt,” a majority of Texans help this system, in keeping with a Texas Public Coverage ballot from Sept. O’Rourke, who represented a border metropolis, El Paso, has not shied away from immigration and has campaigned extensively in South Texas and the Rio Grande Valley. 

The 2 candidates met at what’s going to seemingly be the one debate on Sept. 30, within the Rio Grande Valley. O’Rourke slammed  Abbott on immigration, noting that he is been in energy for eight years and nonetheless,  “you blame everybody else” for the immigration disaster.  

Previous to the controversy, a spotlight group informed Nexstar that 40% supported Abbott, 27% backed O’Rourke, and 33% had been undecided. After the controversy, 50% supported O’Rourke, 43% supported Abbott, and seven% had been undecided.