Beto O'Rourke

the momentum is with us right now and if we needed more proof you probably saw this but on january 31st in a special election for a state senate seat a democrat defeated the republican by 14 points in a district that trump had won 14 months earlier by 17 points it was a 31 point swing

in Tarrant County, home to Fort Worth.

So there are really good things happening here, but we know that we're going to meet the threat of the president trying to control this situation in Texas.

I don't know that I'm smart enough to to be able to divine the answer.

What I see, I spend most of my time with our group powered by people registering young voters.

And then it's important that we not just register them.

We stay in touch with them because.

We don't really have so much a registration problem as we have a turnout problem.

When I ran for governor in 22, 9 million registered Texans didn't cast a ballot.

A lot of them were these young people, very often first in their families to be registered to vote, who are intimidated by the voter suppression, voter intimidation regime that we have in Texas.

So my theory of the case, in part,

is that meeting these young voters where they are getting them registered staying in touch with them and having them turn out at much higher rates is going to help democrats but i will concede this much david that i don't think that's sufficient for the task at hand i think persuasion is in order as well and i don't know that you can do it at a distance through technology or money i think you have to be in the 254 counties of texas reaching out to people

everywhere.

We saw what happened when Democrats took places like the Rio Grande Valley in South Texas for granted.

It had voted overwhelmingly for Democrats for the last 100, 150 years.

And as we saw in 2020 and 2022,

And certainly in 2024, it was a big shift that moved over to Republicans and Donald Trump.

What we're seeing from the exit polls from the primary is that population is now open for persuasion.

It's in the game and it's not spoken for already.

I think that's an exciting dynamic in Texas.