Not really. Even a half-decomposed dog turd would be a massive improvement over Abbott, but I think Beto ruled himself out for a whole lot of voters here when he said
he's coming for ARs and AKs. I get that that line was said through the rage over a mass shooting in his hometown and the frustration that the U.S. rarely does
anything of substance about gun violence, but it was oh-so-easy for the usual suspects to take that sound bite and run with it.
Honestly, we need whoever runs against the hard-right dingbats the Republicans have been fielding to have as little baggage and as widespread an appeal as possible. While I know Beto means well, I feel like that one comment and his lackluster presidential run lost a bunch of folks. Hell, even a lot of the liberals here are well-armed. If we're going to have a presidential primary candidate in the mix for governor, it should be Castro, not Beto.
Guns aren't even the biggest issue right now when the state government keeps trying to curb our
extremely basic rights to seek appropriate healthcare and make it more difficult for folks to exercise their right to vote, yet I know that's what the Republicans are going to make the big issue with Beto in the mix. And I don't expect them to reflect Beto's actual (surprisingly popular, even here) stance when they do it, because it's politics in 2021—they're already playing that up (and some other, equally dishonest
BONUS exaggerations) as a major assault on Yer Rights.
What the Democrats have to do is seize on how the real, recent big-headline assaults on Texans' rights are hurting Texans. Point to the hypocritical micromanagement the "party of small government" has been doing in peoples' lives, adding unnecessary restrictions on everything from healthcare to elections to even individual county and city policies. The Republicans' latest censorship push on library books is a national embarrassment. It's all too easy to note how other businesses' concerns are ignored as to how these far-right policies will hurt their ability to operate here and attract quality talent who actually want to live in this hellhole. Point to things like Salesforce covering relocation costs for employees who want to leave Texas because of it. Hell, highlight the absolute failure that is our power grid—you can't operate jack shit if the lights aren't even on—and the absolute inability to do anything substantive to fix it after the fact. We're having trouble providing basic first-world services under Abbott's watch, and it doesn't just bring the local chip plant to a halt—it kills people. Abbott's government found time to pick on trans kids—a very small minority who just wants to be able to live their lives like the rest of us—but not fix the one thing that benefits most of Texas and that basically everyone agrees should be a priority: the damn fragile power grid. THOSE issues need to be front and center, not Beto's gun comments from years ago. There's such a wealth of failures and big-government horsecrap that goes against Texas' older-school "leave us alone and make it a good place to do business" attitude to work with this time.
Dammit, Beto, you're honestly better off as a local/regional candidate or a behind-the-scenes strategy role at this point. His ground game running against Cruz—visiting as many places in Texas as he could—was exactly what someone running for governor should do. But it's gotta be someone else.
Whoever stands the best chance of restoring sanity to the governor's mansion is going to get my vote, regardless—it's whether or not they're going to get the majority of all the other votes that's the biggest issue.
This place is exhausting.