Why Beto O’Rourke’s bid for Texas governor could be a challenge for Biden as well as Republicans

Former congressman Beto O’Rourke, who launched his bid to be the next governor of Texas this week, is already proving that his candidacy could be more of a challenge than a boon to national Democrats including President Joe Biden ahead of next year’s midterms.

The Texas Democrat found himself squarely in the progressive lane of the 2020 Democratic primary during his short-run bid for the White House last year, not as left-leaning as Senator Bernie Sanders but firmly more liberal than Mr Biden thanks to his call for a legalisation of marijuana at the federal level, opposition to the death penalty, support of a public option for healthcare, and famously tough stance on guns including support for a total ban on AR-15s.

Part of that leftward bent in the 2020 primary included a progressive immigration policy, which he unveiled in May of 2019, that called for increasing staff at ports of entry to reduce wait times, streamlining the asylum process, increasing visa caps, halting construction of former President Donald Trump’s border wall, and more.

Now, however, he finds himself running for statewide office against Gov Greg Abbott in Texas, a long-running bastion of conservative power. The former congressman previously represented El Paso, a border city and county that votes reliably blue.

Perhaps because of that political reality, he found himself attacking Mr Biden from the right on the issue of border security this week during an interview with a local Texas CBS affiliate.

“It’s clear that President Biden could be doing a better job at the border. It is not enough of a priority for his administration,” Mr O’Rourke said.

Making it clear from which angle he was criticising the president, Mr O’Rourke added that the administration needed to focus on bringing “predictability, order and the rule of law” back to the US-Mexico border region.

His comments come as the Biden administration has struggled with solutions for perennial surges of migrants arriving at the US-Mexico border, including a massive crowd of thousands of primarily Haitian migrants who arrived in Del Rio, Texas, earlier this year.

The Independent reached out to Mr O’Rourke’s campaign for comment in this article.

The White House has sought to address the root causes of migration across Central and South America, headed by Vice President Kamala Harris, but such work has had little immediate effect on the steady stream of migrants heading north. Republicans, meanwhile, blame the White House and Democrats for the surges due to their refusal to utilise the same widely-condemned immigration policies pursued by the Trump administration.

The comment by Mr O’Rourke could leave an opening for Republicans to claim that “even Democrats” are turning against the White House on the issue as the president and vice president face brutal poll numbers for their handling of the situation. The GOP has already signalled that it will be an issue on which their party focuses much of its attention during battles for House and Senate seats next year.

But immigration isn’t the only issue on which Mr O’Rourke has broken from Mr Biden in the past year. The now-candidate appeared at a voting rights rally in July in which he endorsed an end to the Senate’s filibuster rule, a move that would reshape the institution by allowing most legislation to pass with a simple 51-vote majority. Mr Biden, a former senator, has taken the position of moderates such as Senators Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin in opposition to that change. He’s far from the only Democrat to take that position, but a national focus by the media on his race could reignite those calls for reform of the Senate from House progressives.

Mr O’Rourke’s bid for the governor’s mansion remains a steep uphill battle; it remains to be seen whether part of that climb will include a public alliance with the White House or a more maverick-style effort that ends up causing headaches for his party’s leaders as they seek to retain control of both houses of Congress next year.