For president, you have to admit that Gavin Newsom is looking pretty good right about now. California’s governor isn’t afraid to take on Republican politicians and bloviators in their mud (a sad tactic, but apparently those highly coveted independent voters understand only power plays and mean tweets). A guy who would make one fantastic Secretary of State in the next Democratic administration was in town recently as part of his seemingly nonstop cross-country voter-registration campaign. And we rational, non-bigoted Texans know — and love him — well.
Last Saturday, Ridglea Theater was filled to capacity (1,200-plus) for a fiery fireside chat with Beto O’Rourke. The former U.S. rep is touring the country right now registering voters and packing houses even in deep-red districts. Apparently, voters for the Face-Eating-Leopard Party are shocked — absolutely gobsmacked — that their faces are now being eaten by leopards and would like a word with the manager. Enter: Beto. Politicians working for people instead of special interests and the 1% is apparently a pretty popular notion, one that the left, right, and center can agree on. Along with the release of the Epstein files, it’s probably our country’s only other unifying idea.
As O’Rourke stepped onto the stage at the Ridglea, he was greeted with immense applause — and by one well-coiffed white woman, who forced herself up front.
“Hey, Beto,” she yelped as she ripped one of his campaign signs in half. “That’s what I think of your politics!”
She continued on unintelligibly as organizers and security bounced her fancy ass. Tough questions are encouraged. Just wait until the speaker opens the floor. Everyone came to see Beto, not you, lady. Play by the rules or get lost.
Along with registering voters, the occasion for the rally was to show support for the 54 Texas Democrats who broke quorum (“Unfair Fight,” Aug. 6) and to raise awareness of Republicans’ efforts to redistrict Tarrant County in their favor. O’Rourke was joined at the Ridglea by U.S. Congressmen Joaquin Castro and Marc Veasey and Tarrant County Commissioner Alisa Simmons.
Photo by Jadon Chesnutt
“If you think about what has happened in the first six or seven months since Donald Trump has been sworn into office,” O’Rourke seethed, “he has defied the co-equal federal courts, absolutely disregarding their decisions. He’s dismantled congressionally chartered and mandated agencies and departments. He has colluded with corrupt public officials, and he has covered up the bribe that he is paying right now to Ghislaine Maxwell to move her to Camp Fed to reduce her sentence, though she is a convicted sex trafficker of little girls and children in this country, and he seeks to dispense with every constitutional safeguard and protection that has kept us a nation of laws and not of kings for these last 249 years. But that’s not the worst. This is the worst. So many of our fellow Americans right now bend the knee to this would-be tyrant. They assume that he already has the power to be a king, and it’s the most powerful among us. The big East Coast law firms will no longer defend his political opponents [and] will contribute hundreds of millions of dollars to his chosen causes. The big universities, whether it’s Columbia or Brown or maybe Harvard as well, with endowments that cumulatively measure in the tens of billions of dollars, are bending the knee. The big media companies like Paramount, which owns CBS — not only are they paying the fine. They’re canceling Stephen Colbert because he speaks the truth to Donald Trump. They’re bending the knee. Mark Zuckerberg bent the knee. Jeff Bezos bent the knee. They’re all bending the knee. And so this guy thinks that he’s absolutely unstoppable. He really believes that he’s the king that these knee-benders tell him that he is, and so he comes to our state to grab even more power in the form of these five congressional districts … . … He thinks that we are going to take it right here, but he doesn’t understand. In Texas, our knees do not bend.”
O’Rourke has lots of momentum, which he’s going to need for the battle ahead. A judge just ruled that O’Rourke’s PAC, Powered by People, can no longer help fund the quorum-blocking Dems’ stays in other states. The order came at the request of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who is now crying to jail O’Rourke for supporting the far-flung Dems.
Gov. Greg Abbott and the rest of the Texas Republican apparatus are doing all they can to create a quorum to pass their illegal, undoubtedly racially gerrymandered voting maps. Abbott is trying to remove a top Dem from office, while Paxton filed complaints in Illinois and California to enforce arrest warrants against the missing Dems. In response, California’s Newsom and some other Democratic governors in other blue-leaning states are thinking about gerrymandering their own maps to create more Dem seats, effectively neutering or even overtaking Republican efforts here.
“That is why Greg Abbott is trying to remove these House Democrats from the caucus,” O’Rourke said Saturday at the Ridglea. “That’s why he’s threatening to charge them with second-degree felonies. That’s why he’s threatening to hunt them down with state troopers now with [FBI Director] Kash Patel, who was busy covering up for Donald Trump’s involvement with Jeffrey Epstein, to go try to find these folks in Illinois or wherever they may be. … [Trump] cannot steal these five seats. His policies are so deeply unpopular in America,” which is reflected in the president’s sagging poll numbers and the massive percentages of voters across the political spectrum who want what Trump promised on the campaign trail: the release of the Epstein files. (And Vice President J.D. Vance is not helping the coverup. On a Sunday talk show, he said Democrats’ names litter the files — so now he and Trump and all their cronies are protecting Democrats? Make it make sense.)
“For the 249 years of America,” O’Rourke said Saturday, “we have come up against some mighty odds, and we’ve overcome them at each and every turn. We defeated the British Empire, the most powerful force on the planet at the time, to secure our independence and freedom, so that we would never be ruled by kings. And we’re not about to start now, right? We defeated the armies of the Confederacy. 300,000 young Union men sacrificed their lives — they’re 17, 18, 19 years old — to establish that never again could one American own another, and it wasn’t even 80 years later that men from this very community landed on those beaches in Normandy in June of 1944, willing to give their lives to defeat fascism halfway across the world, to protect this democracy here at home, and then the generation that followed them — right here in Fort Worth and cities throughout the country — peacefully and nonviolently went up against the elected and armed thugs of Jim Crow, and they won full civil rights and political rights for every single one of us regardless of the color of our skin, of our gender, of our country, of national origin, of any other difference between us. We are the lucky heirs of all that service, all of that struggle, all of that sacrifice that has come before, and what we do with this great inheritance is going to define us in the eyes of history, and it is going to determine what is possible for this country going forward. We cannot be found wanting at this moment of truth, and we must not allow the moment to pass without a fight, so I ask you to do all you can with what you have, wherever you are today and every single day going forward. I promise you, if we do that, we will overcome this challenge as well. We will win this country back, and we will make it one worth saving going forward. Thank you, Tarrant County. We love you guys.”
Fort Worth Weekly photographer Jadon Chesnutt contributed reporting to this story.
This column reflects the opinions of the editorial board and not the Fort Worth Weekly. To submit a column, please email Editor Anthony Mariani at Anthony@FWWeekly.com. He will gently edit it for clarity and concision.
Photo by Jadon Chesnutt
Photo by Jadon Chesnutt
Photo by Jadon Chesnutt
