Former candidate for everything Beto O'Rourke may be running again. Well, this is not a surprise because he's never stopped running since losing to Governor Greg Abbott in 2022. We hear rumors Robert Francis may run again for the U.S. Senate in 2026.

This is from Guy Benson:

The fact that he isn't ruling out another Senate run is likely code for "I'm running," considering that he previously reversed his own hard 'no' to launch a previous campaign. After falling to Cruz, O'Rourke categorically rejected the idea of running for president in the subsequent cycle. It wasn't a probably not. It was an absolutely not because doing so would destroy my family.

He did run for president, and then for governor, and who knows but he may do it again.

To be fair, other politicians like to tease their followers about running. I remember Governor Cuomo running so many times that it became an annual event. One big difference is that Cuomo was the governor of a big state like New York whereas Beto has never won anything but a super Democrat district in El Paso.

O'Rourke faces two challenges if he runs.

First, South Texas has become more GOP friendly. This is not the 2018 Texas election when he nearly beat Senator Cruz. The best example of this is Starr County, a very Mexican American area on the border that flipped and voted 57% for Trump. That was the flip of flips and the support for Trump was a lot about immigration.

The second problem is Beto himself. He was completely "undressed" by the Abbott campaign in 2022. The governor ran every Beto video about AR-15s and other liberal causes. He painted Beto liberal and that's what Texas thinks of him. Another problem is that three-time losers usually don't get a fourth chance.

My guess is that he won't run because he knows the landscape is not Beto-friendly. So we will probably have a lot of Beto to watch on TV, but he won't be at the victory party on election night 2026.

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Image: Gage Skidmore