With the midterm elections coming up in November, have you decided who you’re voting for? 2018 Democratic Senate nominee Beto O’Rourke was born and raised in El Paso where he served two terms on the El Paso City Council in 2005. He then served eight terms in the U.S. Congress in 2012 where he made it a priority to secure bipartisan support for his legislation. Beto’s support of women’s health, equality, gun safety, immigration, and justice in terms of marijuana criminalization makes him a competent candidate for the U.S. Senate. (POI + Women’s Health) Beto has openly supported women’s health. Not only does he believe that it is a woman’s right to choose what she does with her body, he supports making it easier for women to access “affordable and quality healthcare” (“Women’s Health”). O’Rourke makes this a priority since “Texas has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the developing world” (“Women’s Health”).
As of 2014, Texas’ maternal mortality rate was “35.8 per 100,000 live births” while Japan was 5 and Poland was 3 (Chuck). Beto supports funding family planning centers like Planned Parenthood to prevent these deaths from childbirth (“Women’s Health”). Not only will funding these centers help lower the maternal mortality rate, it will provide young women and low income families access to birth control and emergency contraception. While O’Rourke wants to support women, his opponent Ted Cruz has expressed his pro-life views that will restrict women’s access to affordable and quality healthcare by defunding the family planning centers. His beliefs would also force rape victims to give birth to their rapists baby (Planned Parenthood). This is further proving Beto’s support for the health of 50.4% of Texas’ population. (POI + Equality) Not only does Beto O’Rourke advocate for women’s healthcare, he supports equality for groups like the LGBTQ+ community and women. In 2017, Texas was estimated to have 770,000 adults and 158,000 youth in the LGBTQ+ community (Alumit). That is 3.2% of the population of Texas that needs a representative in the senate who will keep them in mind when making decisions. Beto wants this community to have the same rights as every other American and he wants to do this by “repealing the Defense of Marriage Act entirely” (“Equality”).
The Defense of Marriage Act, DOMA, is a law signed by Bill Clinton in 1996 that allows individual states to not recognize same sex marriages for federal marriage benefits (Barr). While section 3 of this law was repealed, it still allows states to choose to not acknowledge a marriage if it is between the same sex. While Beto supports same sex marriage and equality through the LGBTQ+, his opponent as spoken out against same sex marriage and tried to introduce State Marriage Defense Act as a new Constitutional Amendment which allowed states to define marriage (Cruz). As well as wanting equality for LGBTQ+, Beto also wants to close the wage gap and ensure that all Americans are paid and treated fairly. “Recent research shows women… make $0.80 on the dollar compared to their male counterparts” and 54.4% – 62.5% for women of color (Calfas). While O’Rourke wants to take action to gain equality for women, the same can not be said for his opponent. In 2014, Cruz voted against the Paycheck Fairness Act but still claimed that he “acknowledges the hurdles women face in the workforce” (Leonhardt). Again proving that Beto is the only man in this campaign race that cares about women. (POI + Gun Safety) As well as advocating for gay marriage, O’Rourke wants to preserve the second amendment while ensuring citizens “can live without fear of gun violence in their communities” (“Gun Safety”). Beto proposes requiring background checks for all guns sales to ensure that guns are only sold to law-abiding citizens.
Opponent Ted Cruz believes that America’s gun laws are fine and that thoughts and prayers are all that is needed to heal wounds of school shooting victims. Citizens have spoken up about the issue to Cruz stating “We’re tired of paying you in exchange for your useless prayers” (@BetjayM) and “How about you stop praying and start legislating” (@MylaTostatto). Backlash from the residents of Texas could prove that Ted does not have the state’s best interest in mind like Beto. To continue gun safety, O’Rourke would like to oppose the Concealed Carry Reciprocity, which is a bill that requires states to recognize concealed carry licenses from other states (Rep. Hudson). Beto recognizes that this is a dangerous bill because the requirements of each state’s concealed carry license vary dramatically, and they are not “universally verifiable” to police officers (The Truth). And the “residents of the twelve states that do not require a permit to carry would not have a permit” to show an officer of another state (The Truth). This bill would “force Texas to allow anyone from states with weak to nonexistent conceal carry laws to disregard our own public safety requirements” (Gun Safety). (POI + Immigration) Beto also has a unique view on immigration. With a political atmosphere of republicans wanting to build a wall and separate families who are seeking asylum, O’Rourke doesn’t think spending billions of dollars on a bordering wall is the answer. The democrat sympathises dreamers who came here as young children, who might get sent back to a country they have never known.
In Texas, more than 124,000 young people have benefited from DACA and ending it would “cost Texas nearly $6.3 billion in annual GDP losses” (Cruz). Beto would like to pass the DREAM act which ensures that the dreamers, which do not know of any other home than here, will be granted citizenship. While Beto fights for the young dreamers, his opponent Ted Cruz was the only person out of 98 to vote against advancing the legislation to grant “as many as 1.8 million young immigrants brought into the country illegally as children” (Diaz). O’Rourke would also like to close the detention centers and prisons that profit from detaining families. (POI + Justice) Not only does Beto view immigration differently than his opponent, he also has a unique view on justice and criminalization. Not only does he wants to end the federal prohibition on marijuana, he also wants to expunging the criminal record of those charged with a non-violent marijuana crime. This is a smart plan that could easily win over voters because marijuana can bring in a large revenue from taxes from the 28.7 million Texans. In terms of the justice system, Beto wants to dismantle the practice of private and profit prisons that have the encouragement to send more people to incarceration. Research shows that those prisons are also more prone to violence (Justice). also recognizes that our imprisonment system is biased against people of color and the poor. (POI + Advertisement/Speeches) While most politicians pay for smear campaigns on their opponent, Beto O’Rourke releases ads recorded on an iPhone of his trail. And while Beto is releasing heartwarming moral high ground videos, his opponent Ted Cruz has released multiple ads trying to steer voters away from the truth.
