Beto O'Rourke

And James Tallarico is just so different than anything that we have seen, or at least that I have seen in the state of Texas.

That package that you just described, you know, his extraordinary ability to connect with audiences, whether he's doing it on TikTok or

or Instagram digitally through a screen or in person in large gatherings and town halls in rural communities and big cities alike.

This feels different to people because I think it is different for all of us.

And if 2024 was a change election, I think 2026, I guess they're all change elections.

But I think the premium on change and something different is going to be greater than perhaps at any other time.

So I think he's going to represent that to people.

And kind of interestingly, just from my experience, and we're very different in

many, many ways, but running in Trump's first midterm in 2018, you're right, David, I had probably one of the most bipartisan voting records in Congress.

I was in the minority the entire time I was there.

The only way to get anything passed was to find Republican colleagues with whom I could agree on, and then to get Donald Trump to sign that stuff in the last two years.

that I was there.

But I would go to communities where people would say, man, I love you because you're one of the most progressive guys I've ever seen here.

And I'd go to other communities and people would say, I love you because you're so conservative.

I was different than anything that they had seen before.

And they would pin their hopes to somebody breaking through a system that had so badly failed them wherever they happened to live.

across the state of Texas.

And I feel that same energy as I travel the state right now in 2026, as I did in 2018, but perhaps even more so.

So, you know, I don't know that this is in any way a conventional year where conventional theories of the case are going to apply.

I don't know, I never thought about it that way, but that could be the case.