A Lazy Election Trope Gets A Boring Replay In Texas
The article discusses the cyclical nature of political campaigns and media narratives, illustrating this with the Texas Senate race between Ken Paxton and Beto O’Rourke. It highlights how lawn signs and campaign symbols are repeatedly used to gauge political support, often creating misleading impressions. In 2018, O’Rourke’s yard signs and media coverage portrayed him as a rising star, embracing Texas culture and making blue Texas feel more attainable. Despite signs favoring O’Rourke, he ultimately lost the election to Cruz. The piece underscores that election outcomes are what truly matter, and all the repeated stories and symbolism are just distractions until the votes are counted.The author emphasizes the futility of relying on superficial campaign signals to predict results, highlighting the importance of ballot counts over media narratives.
Few things are ever new in politics. It’s like a television show that keeps producing the same season every year, but with different faces.
This week, a Dallas Morning News columnist took a walk around town and announced that Ken Paxton is finished.
“I am counting political signs to see who is winning in the Texas Senate race,” Dallas Cothrum wrote. “The news is not good for Ken Paxton. On most days he loses, sometimes by a wide margin. Recently I went by three particularly expensive homes in a row flying the James Talarico brand.”
Brace yourself, because you’ll be shocked by what comes next.
In 2018, this story showed up in every lazy media outlet. “Beto O’Rourke yard signs are everywhere. Where are Ted Cruz’s?” The Houston Chronicle wrote that the Cruz campaign didn’t really care about lawn signs all that much, but the newspaper added that Beto thought the signs were helping him to make an argument beyond the limits of his political base: “O’Rourke told the paper that his signs have especially helped his campaign’s reach in more traditionally conservative neighborhoods.” It’s easy to wonder how a name posted on a lawn extends an argument to people who don’t agree with you, but let us not question Beto O’Rourke, the famous expert on the path to political victory.
Television news also got in on the act, counting lawn signs on camera.
After Cruz won the election, the New York Times offered up these extraordinarily awkward paragraphs about how cool Beto had been, and how thoroughly Texas had been awash in his rock star lawn signs:
Republicans have long claimed the pop culture of Texas as their own — the barbecue joints and country music stars and pickup trucks. Mr. O’Rourke embraced those Texas symbols and reclaimed them for Democrats, jamming with Willie Nelson, steering his San Antonio-built Toyota pickup truck through rural Texas and air-drumming post-debate in the drive-through lane at Whataburger. It used to be an awkward counterculture stretch to be a Texas Democrat. He made it cool.
Even before Mr. O’Rourke’s narrow defeat, his yard signs had become one of the biggest visible displays of blue Texas in a generation. His signs easily outnumbered Cruz signs and helped convince the public, the news media and Republicans, long before the polls showed a tight race, that change was coming. It was a mass front-lawn revolt.
Imagine “air-drumming post-debate in the drive-through lane at Whataburger” and still not winning an election. He drives a pick-up truck, so victory seemed so certain. And did you say Willie Nelson?
We’ll know who’s winning the election when the ballots have been counted, and the rest of the generic replay can just be ignored.
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