DALLAS — Beto O’Rourke’s latest work is hitting bookshelves in the middle of a heated campaign to defeat Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.
The former El Paso congressman’s book, "We’ve Got to Try," was released Tuesday. It makes the case for the importance of voting rights, telling the story of Lawrence Aaron Nixon, a Black doctor and civil rights leader in El Paso.
In 1924, Nixon challenged Texas laws that barred Black people from voting in Democratic Party primaries. His case made it to the Supreme Court twice, Nixon was able to cast his ballot in a primary election until 1944.
The book tells the stories of other Texas voting rights activists past and present, some of whom O’Rourke encountered on long drives across Texas during his unsuccessful 2018 Senate campaign against Sen. Ted Cruz.
The Democratic gubernatorial nominee started working on the book after ending his long-shot presidential campaign in 2019.
“I set out to learn our history, to travel this great state, and to listen to and learn from the people that have been in this fight their entire lives,” O’Rourke said in a video promoting the book on Twitter.
The book received a positive write-up in The Washington Post this week, in which political scientist and voting rights advocate Lee Drutman wrote that "We’ve Got to Try" is not a clichéd candidate autobiography.
No other major publications have reviewed the book, but it had an average rating of 4.2 out of 5 stars on the review site GoodReads.
"We’ve Got to Try" is O’Rourke’s second book. He co-authored the book "Dealing Death and Drugs: The Big Business of Dope in the U.S. and Mexico: an Argument for Ending the Prohibition of Marijuana," during his time on the El Paso City Council.
Abbott released his memoir, "Broken but Unbowed," in 2016.
O’Rourke is far from the first Texas politician to publish a book while on the campaign trail. Former state Sen. Wendy Davis also published a memoir while challenging Abbott in 2014, and former Housing Secretary Julián Castro published his during his bid for the White House in 2019, the same year O’Rourke ran.
Cruz has published two books: a 2015 memoir during his presidential run and "One Vote Away," a recount of close Supreme Court cases through history.
The junior senator has a third book in which he opines on the legal system. "Justice Corrupted: How the Left Weaponized Our Legal System" is set for release in October 2022.
Polls show O’Rourke around 7 points behind Abbott, a deficit he says he can overcome if his campaign registers enough people to vote and encourages them to come to the polls.
In a video O’Rourke posted on Twitter, he read an excerpt from the book about how this era presents the best opportunity to fight for voting rights since 1965.
“That’s what draws me to the work that I do, running for and serving in public office, volunteering for other candidates, testifying at public hearings on election bills, helping to register voters across Texas, speaking out about our Democracy, and joining my fellow Americans to do the work to save it,” he said.
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