Beto O’Rourke Uses Texas Democrats’ Stunt To Get Back In News

It took a whole nine days for Texas Democrats to give up after running away, and the only person who seems to be enjoying this moment is Beto O’Rourke.

As our readers will remember, it was deja vu all over again when Texas House Democrats hopped on a plane and went to Illinois to deny a quorum to prevent the state House from pushing through a (legal) redistricting plan. Is this gerrymandering, the same as the Democrats in other states have done? Yup. Are the Democrats who are screaming perfomatively about redistricting their own states to cut out Republican seats flaming hypocrites? Also yup. My personal favorite was Governor Maura Healey of Massachusetts, while hosting some of the runaway Texas Democrats, declared that maybe her state needed redistricting to fight Donald Trump. Well, about that…

Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey is an idiot, and I don’t use that term lightly. She’s now threatening to redistrict her state in retaliation to Texas’ redistricting. Massachusetts hasn’t had a republican in 30 years. pic.twitter.com/vw1bvDns09

— Mike / 2 The Point Podcast (@2ThePointDotCom) August 7, 2025

Whoops. Let’s just charitably say that the governors who have supported these Democrats have had some problems with their support. Governor J.B. Pritzker of Illinois, who was definitely looking to ride this wave to boost his own profile, got mocked by none other than Stephen Colbert for how gerrymandered his state is. But the person who really decided to hitch his star to the runaway wagon was none other than failed politician Beto O’Rourke. Yes, the man who would be president governor senator, has used this moment to jump back into the state and national spotlight.

Apparently, Beto O’Rourke has a PAC called “Powered by People,” and he was offering to pay the bills for the runaway Democrats. After all, it costs money to cover hotel rooms and food, especially when those same Democrats are being fined $500 a day for abandoning their offices. However, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton successfully got an injunction to stop Beto and his PAC from paying the bills.

A Tarrant County judge ruled that Beto O’Rourke’s political action committee cannot financially support Texas lawmakers who left the state to halt the passage of a new congressional redistricting plan.

On Aug. 8, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit in the 348th District Court requesting an injunction prohibiting O’Rourke’s Powered by People organization from helping fund Democratic representatives’ stays in places like Illinois and New York.

More than 50 state representatives left in early August to break quorum, ensuring there wouldn’t be enough present at the Texas Capitol for Republicans to approve a redistricting map that could flip five Democrat-held U.S. House seats to the GOP.

Hours after Paxton filed the lawsuit, Tarrant County District Judge Megan Fahey, a Republican first appointed to the bench by Gov. Greg Abbott in 2019, signed a temporary restraining order barring O’Rourke and Powered by People from using and raising money to pay for things like hotel accommodations and meals for the quorum breakers.

According to an Aug. 5 Houston Chronicle report, Chris Evans, spokesman for Powered by People, said the organization had covered transportation and lodging costs for lawmakers who had fled the state. In his request for an injunction, Paxton characterized this type of funding as “bribery.”

In her decree, Fahey said it’s illegal to use political contributions for personal expenses, like out-of-state travel. Fahey scheduled a hearing on the matter for Aug. 19.

Beto complained and filed a lawsuit against Paxton, accusing him of trying to shut down the PAC by investigating the PAC itself. Paxton then suggested that Beto O’Rourke could just go to jail for contempt of court instead.

Attorney General Ken Paxton has asked a Texas district court judge to jail former Rep. Beto O’Rourke over his fundraising pitches connected to the state’s intensifying redistricting battle.

Paxton’s request accused the Texas Democrat of violating a court order that the judge, Tarrant County’s Megan Fahey, issued last week that barred fundraising by O’Rourke and his nonprofit Powered by People intended to bankroll the efforts by Texas Democratic lawmakers to derail the redistricting effort.

In support of his claim, he highlighted a remark O’Rourke made at a Saturday rally — a day after Fahey’s order — saying “there are no refs in this game. Fuck the rules.”

But an attorney for O’Rourke says Paxton’s characterization of O’Rourke’s remark was an “outright lie.” O’Rourke’s comment, she noted, was a reference to the broader nationwide fight over redistricting — a call for Democratic states to counteract Texas’ redistricting push by undertaking their own partisan redrawing of political boundaries.

The problem is, of course, that putting Beto O’Rourke in jail sets him up as some kind of “resistance hero,” and he knows it.

Beto O’Rourke has now shifted the spotlight fully to himself, his PAC, and his battle with Ken Paxton… while the Texas Democrats who kicked this whole fight off are cut off from his PAC money, and have to slowly slink back into Texas, having achieved exactly nothing, despite their spin to the contrary.

ABC13 has confirmed with multiple sources that House Democrats will return to Texas.

Eyewitness News has not confirmed the date, but we do know that Democrats believe they’ve accomplished their mission by killing the first special session and by raising national awareness about the mid-decade redistricting effort.

It is unclear which day they will be in Austin at the Capitol, but they stress that they will push for Hill Country flooding relief to be the priority.

“Killing the first special session” means exactly nothing when Governor Greg Abbott had vowed to keep calling special sessions until the redistricting map was passed. To put it simply, the Texas Democrats were outplayed. They could not outlast Abbott, and without Beto and his PAC money, they were out of funds. So they will be forced to return to a fight they were destined to lose, because the Texas state Senate has already passed the redistricting map. The state Senate Democrats did stage a walkout in protest, but the quorum was not broken, and the redistricting measure passed.

So, who benefited from all these shenanigans? Not the people of Texas, who got to watch their elected Democrats go make fools of themselves in other states. Not J.B. Pritzker or Maura Healey or Kathy Hochul, who tried to pose as resistance figures, but whose own gerrymandered congressional districts were highlighted for an entire nation to see. Definitely not the Texas Democrats who ran off, as they now have to deal with the warrants demanding their return, and the daily fines being levied as they start moving toward returning.

It looks like the only winner in this is Beto O’Rourke, whose name was all but gone from the public sphere until he jumped into this with both feet. He used his PAC to provide the money, and even if the PAC ends up getting sued, sanctioned, or shut down, he is back in the spotlight, piggybacking off the notoriety and getting media attention once more. Maybe, just maybe, Beto thinks he will be able to use this to launch yet another run for office.

Beto sees an opportunity. He sees a chance to juice donations and make money and curse a lot.

He also sees an opening for 2028, and before anyone condemns perpetual losers, Joe Biden ran for president 4 times before he was actually elected.

That’s what all of these guys see… https://t.co/trkFLUJv5N

— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) August 13, 2025

Hope apparently springs eternal when you’re a rich dilettante looking to spend money for potential influence later. Come on, Texas Democrats – make Beto your champion once more!

Featured image: Beto O’Rourke at a Los Angeles rally on April 27, 2019, photo by Luke Harold, public domain under CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication

The post Beto O’Rourke Uses Texas Democrats’ Stunt To Get Back In News appeared first on Victory Girls Blog.