--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Texas is big, but there's a statewide race right now that's even bigger than Texas. Absolutely. To me, this race feels like the presidential race of 2018.
--:-- Noel King: Eric Benson has been living and breathing this race for Texas Monthly. He's doing a podcast about it, too. It's called Underdog, Beto versus Cruz. It has the two biggest personalities.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You know, Ted Cruz came very close to becoming the Republican nominee for president. And Beto O'Rourke has been this rising Democratic star. He raised $38.1 million last quarter, which is a lot more money than any Senate candidate has raised ever in a quarter.
--:-- Noel King: You know, it's not just breaking the record. It's totally smashing the record. He's become a national celebrity. His videos are, you know, there are like 20 million people who see it on Facebook.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So I think there's an idea that both a Democrat winning in Texas would be a huge story because no Democrats have done it for so long and no Democrats come close. And then, you know, and then there's this idea that Cruz has run for president, likely will run for president again at some point. So he's positioned himself aggressively as a national figure.
--:-- Noel King: And I think because of the way that O'Rourke's campaign has resonated, there's a real possibility that O'Rourke could have a national career, whatever happens in this Senate election.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So Beto O'Rourke and Ted Cruz debate for the second time tonight. What was it like the first time these two met?
--:-- Eric Benson: So they met in mid-September, and I think people didn't quite know what that was going to look like. Ted Cruz is obviously a very seasoned debater, you know, went through all those debates during the Republican presidential primaries in 2016.
--:-- Noel King: Beto is someone who almost no one has seen in a debate outside of El Paso. And it was true to the campaigns that the two of them have run.
--:-- Eric Benson: Within months of being sworn to serve as your senator, Ted Cruz was not in Texas. He was in Iowa. Congressman O'Rourke doesn't seem to understand that representing Texas is not doing a photo op in each county in Texas with reporters in tow.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Cruz spends a lot of time making contrasts between his positions and Beto O'Rourke's positions. And it takes a lot of time trying to paint Beto O'Rourke as a kind of extremist leftist, someone who's more in line with a Bernie Sanders or an Elizabeth Warren and less in line with the people of Texas.
--:-- Eric Benson: Congressman O'Rourke has voted 67 times to keep Obamacare. He hasn't been there to fix the people that are getting hurt that are forced into part-time jobs. Instead, his answer is socialized medicine.
--:-- Noel King: The most memorable moment was from the very end of the debate when they gave the kind of softball question. We'd like to ask you to tell us something that you admire about your opponent.
--:-- Eric Benson: Great. Senator Cruz and I were both elected to the United States Congress in the same year, 2012. We both have young children. I know how hard he works for America, and he does so at great sacrifice to his family and to his kids. And so I thank you, Senator Cruz, for your public service. Thank you.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And, you know, Cruz kind of gave him a ditto on that, you know, said likewise, you know, Congressman O'Rourke does that. And then he went off and used it to attack O'Rourke as a kind of Bernie Sanders-style socialist.
--:-- Eric Benson: Look, I think Congressman O'Rourke is passionate. He is energetic. He believes in what he's fighting for. In fact, I have very much the same sentiments. You know, last year I did three debates with Bernie Sanders, and I expressed this at all three debates, that Bernie Sanders believes in what he's fighting for. He believes in socialism.
--:-- Noel King: Now, I think what he's fighting for doesn't work, but I think you are absolutely sincere like Bernie. And O'Rourke then answered with a quip, true to form. And that was the end of the debate.
--:-- Eric Benson: So you've been living in this campaign for months now. What has been the most memorable moment for you? If there's one moment that sort of really defined what this race is about for the two candidates, what was it?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I think, and I told this to Ted Cruz on Friday, I think in some ways the most telling moment of the campaign involved actually two tweets.
--:-- Eric Benson: There was a police shooting in Dallas. An off-duty Dallas police officer shot an unarmed black man in his home named Botham Jean. And Beto was speaking about it at an African-American church. How can it be in this day and age in this very year in this community that a young man African American in his own apartment is shot and killed by a police officer How will we continue to lose the lives of unarmed black men in the United States of America? That is not justice. That is not us.
--:-- Noel King: And this video had been shared among Beto's supporters. And Cruz's social media team tweeted out the same video that Beto had tweeted out and said in his own words. And he's using it as evidence that Beto is anti-law enforcement.
--:-- Eric Benson: So these two candidates are not competing for the same voters. There are two parallel campaigns happening in Texas. But the same thing that Beto O'Rourke could use to mobilize his base, Ted Cruz thinks that exact same piece of tape will mobilize his base.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Where did Beto O'Rourke come from? Who is he?
--:-- Eric Benson: So Beto O'Rourke is right at the end of his third term as the congressman from El Paso. His father, Pat O'Rourke, was this kind of well-known political figure around El Paso from an early age. Big kind of Texas Democrats would be coming through the O'Rourke household.
--:-- Noel King: Pat was, I think, the Texas co-chairman for Jesse Jackson's presidential campaign. So Jesse Jackson was coming through the O'Rourke house in 1988.
--:-- Eric Benson: And then, yeah, and then Beto went to an all-men's boarding school for high school in Virginia and went to Columbia University, was the captain of the rowing crew, and then came back to El Paso and was on the city council by the age of 32.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That's the part that makes it seem like this guy from the beginning of his life was sort of bound for a political career.
--:-- Eric Benson: The parts that are more complicating were, unlike Ted Cruz, who it seems from all accounts was pretty fascinated by politics and American history from a very early age, Beto was more into punk rock.
--:-- Noel King: He was in a band with one of the guys from At The Drive-In, right?
--:-- Eric Benson: That's right. Yeah, they're banned Foss. And yeah, and Beto, when he graduated Columbia, he didn't immediately go off and get some prestigious position somewhere. He had an entry-level job in publishing and worked for an art mover and then eventually went back to El Paso, started up a company that was both a web design firm and an alternative weekly website and newspaper.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: How would Ted Cruz portray him, say, like in a campaign ad?
--:-- Eric Benson: One of the early Ted Cruz attack ads was this kind of country jingle. If you're going to run in Texas, you can't be a liberal man. Because liberal thought is not the spirit of a Lone Star man. You've got to be tough in Texas and honest about your plans.
--:-- Noel King: If you're going to run in Texas, you can't be a liberal man. There's been an effort on the Cruz campaign's part to portray Beto O'Rourke as kind of out of step with Texas. Someone who doesn't represent what Cruz considers Texas values.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So where's Ted Cruz at now? I mean, people know him because he ran for president, but give us an idea of Ted Cruz's background.
--:-- Eric Benson: Cruz is someone who rose very quickly through the ranks of Republican politics. He's a lawyer. He clerked on the Supreme Court for William Rehnquist.
--:-- Noel King: He worked in the Bush administration on the recount in 2000. He came back to Texas and was Solicitor General of Texas at a very, very young age.
--:-- Eric Benson: And then six years ago, there was an open Senate seat, and he was able to galvanize this kind of far-right Tea Party energy.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And when he got to Washington, he made sure that he was immediately a national figure. I think his first really big moment was when he basically orchestrated a shutdown of the U.S. government to try to defund Obamacare.
--:-- Eric Benson: I intend to speak in support of defunding Obamacare until I am no longer able to stand. This grand experiment three and a half years ago is quite simply not working.
--:-- Noel King: How would Beto portray Ted Cruz, say, in a campaign ad or elsewhere?
--:-- Eric Benson: Well, Beto doesn't portray Ted Cruz in campaign ads. Beto's campaign strategy has not been to engage with Cruz. For a long time, he wouldn't mention his name at rallies.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And he thinks that because Cruz is well known already, people have kind of already made up their mind about Ted Cruz. And that been I think a source of some consternation for some Democrats in the state.
--:-- Eric Benson: But of course, there are other groups that are involved in this election. There are super PACs on the Republican side. And then on the Democratic side, there's a super PAC that recently ran an ad that was directed by Richard Linklater, basically making fun of Cruz's campaign slogan, which is tough as Texas.
--:-- Noel King: I mean, come on. If somebody called my wife a dog and said my daddy was in on the Kennedy assassination, I wouldn't be kissing their ass. You stick a finger in their chest and give them a few choice words. Or you drag their ass out by the woodshed and kick their ass, Ted. Come on, Ted.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That's actually a question Cruz got in the first debate from the moderators. You know, Donald Trump said all these awful things about you and now you're in line with him. What do you do?
--:-- Eric Benson: I made a conscious choice to do the job I've been elected to do, which is to represent 28 million Texans. I've got a responsibility, which is to fight for every person here and every person in this state.
--:-- Noel King: And so I have worked hand in hand with the president on substance and we have delivered remarkable victories.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You mentioned these two candidates couldn't be more different. What are they actually offering policy wise?
--:-- Eric Benson: Immigration first. Ted Cruz supports Donald Trump's plan to build a wall. Ted Cruz is a very simple position on immigration. He says legal yes, illegal no.
--:-- Noel King: So Ted Cruz does not believe in a path to citizenship for Dreamers. Ted Cruz wants to abolish DACA and have Dreamers deported.
--:-- Eric Benson: Beto does not support the wall. Beto wants a path to citizenship for Dreamers. And those two positions are totally diametrically opposed.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: On health care, Beto is now kind of in line with a lot of the National Democratic Party in supporting, you know, Medicare for all.
--:-- Eric Benson: Ted Cruz has kind of been the leading opponent of Obamacare in the Senate and would call Beto's plan socialized medicine.
--:-- Noel King: It's really just a fundamental disagreement about the place of government in American society.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Coming up, it's almost been a quarter century since a Democrat has won a statewide office in the state of Texas. So what if Beto does it?
--:-- Eric Benson: I'm Sean Ramos from This is Today Explained. Eric, when was the last time a Democrat held a seat of any significance in Texas?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The last kind of major moment for the Texas Democratic Party was Ann Richards' win in 1990. She was governor?
--:-- Eric Benson: Yeah. So Ann Richards was very charismatic, a very good candidate in 1990. And so she was able to sort of push the state, a state that was really swinging towards the Republicans. She was able to wring one more major Democratic victory out of it.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But then, you know, Ann Richards lost pretty handily to George W. Bush in 1994. And then in 1996, there was a clean Republican sweep.
--:-- Eric Benson: And by 1998, all of the Democratic officeholders were out of office. What is that attributed to? How did the Democrats lose Texas?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: One thing that a lot of people point to is George W. Bush, who remains very popular in the state, was able to kind of consolidate power.
--:-- Eric Benson: And you've had a Texas Republican Party that's been very effective at branding themselves as the true Texans. This is what Ted Cruz is trying to do now, that Ted Cruz is tough as Texas and Democrats are not.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So, you know, the Republicans have made it where basically being Republican and being Texan, they want you to believe that those two things are the same.
--:-- Eric Benson: I asked Ted Cruz on Friday, actually, can you be a liberal and a real Texan, which he laughed at and then pointed to Willie Nelson, who he said was a real Texan, but he liked his music more than his politics.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Another big thing is the kind of redistricting in 2003, which reduced the number of competitive district congressional districts in Texas.
--:-- Eric Benson: And then there's the whole issue of voter ID. Texas is pretty stringent voter ID laws. So how much does that affect how many people show up?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So this thing that LBJ said, that the civil rights movement and the legislation that he helped pass lost the South for a generation.
--:-- Eric Benson: And then more specifically in Texas you had the influence of George W Bush and redistricting and voter ID laws Is that generation finally now passing and you have a candidate like Beto who could actually flip the state partly blue again
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yeah, I think that's definitely possible. I think there's been a calculation on the part of the Texas Republican Party that moderate voters are not going to abandon the party, that their brand is really strong enough that moderate voters are going to stay Republican.
--:-- Eric Benson: And I think Beto's calculation is that actually the Republican Party in Texas has moved far enough to the right that there actually are some moderate voters that you can pick up.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And I think his campaign has always been premised on this idea of turning a massive turnout and changing the Texas electorate.
--:-- Eric Benson: The Republican Party's brand among young people is really bad. And there's migration that's happening from a lot of blue states. And then, of course, the demographic shift in Texas with more Latino voters.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And even though the Latino voters who show up to vote have been more conservative than Latino voters in other states, that's not true of young Latino voters. And the Latino population in Texas is very young.
--:-- Eric Benson: So as with every successive election, there are going to be more young Latino voters who are going to be voting.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Is that shift in Texas being replicated in other states in the South?
--:-- Eric Benson: I think Texas is a pretty unique state. I mean, one, it's famously huge. It is the largest state by land area in the country outside of Alaska.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's the second most populous state, and it's rapidly growing. I mean, there are 28 million Texans. Texas is the South. But the idea that El Paso, where Beto O'Rourke is from, is the South, that's a pretty hard notion to defend.
--:-- Eric Benson: And Texas even has elements in northern Texas that are not that different from Great Plains or Midwestern state. You know, Texas obviously has a border with Oklahoma, and it's really not very far from the panhandle of Texas to Kansas.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You know, Texas is in the middle. Texas is kind of everything.
--:-- Eric Benson: I was down on the border on Saturday with, you know, in advance of Beto coming to McAllen. And the Rio Grande Valley of Texas is a totally fascinating area.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's geographically separated from the rest of the United States. But then when you get down there, it's an incredibly, incredibly vibrant area that sort of is kind of culturally halfway between northern Mexico and America.
--:-- Eric Benson: And people there really feel bicultural. It's also a hugely consequential area for elections in Texas because it's heavily Democratic and it has very low voter turnout.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So Beto has spent a lot of time there and wants to increase turnout. And increasing turnout in the Valley would really, really help a Democrat have a chance at winning statewide.
--:-- Eric Benson: And then you have two massive cities in Texas, in Houston and Dallas. I think Houston is the most diverse city in the country.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Houston is basically like Los Angeles without the ocean. It has a huge Asian population, huge Latino population, large black population.
--:-- Eric Benson: The fun part of covering this campaign is just kind of the diversity of human experience that it opens you up to. And that Texas contains it all is pretty thrilling.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And Beto's hoping that, what, all these pockets of diversity will help make Texas a little more blue in three weeks?
--:-- Eric Benson: What's really interesting about it is that no Democrat in recent years in Texas has chosen to run essentially as a national Democrat.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So I think Beto's campaign, by being sort of stridently progressive, he's basically said, I'm going to run the same campaign I'd run in California or New York or wherever.
--:-- Eric Benson: And I'm going to hope that all of these voters who stay home during midterms are going to come out. You know, and I think he's just made the calculation that it's a lot more important to mobilize lots of voters on the left than it is to play for the small number of voters in the middle.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Eric Benson is the host of a brand new podcast called Underdog, Beto versus Cruz. The audio from Beto's band Foss was a Rolling Stone exclusive. Thanks, Rolling Stone.
--:-- Eric Benson: This episode has been a Today Explained exclusive. Shouts to executive producer Irene Noguchi, editor Bridget McCarthy, engineer Afim Shapiro, producer Noam Hassenfeld, recovering from foot surgery Luke Vanderplug, composer Breakmaster Cylinder, intern Catherine Wheeler, and clutch sub Elisa Escarce.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Today Explained is produced in association with Stitcher, and we are part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
