Former Texas Congressman and current candidate in Texas’s race for governor, Beto O’Rourke is bringing an inspiring message at 4 p.m. March 2 to King Street’s Blue Bicycle Books in a free event. He’ll be discussing his new book, We’ve Got to Try: How the Fight for Voting Rights Makes Everything Else Possible.
It’s O’Rourke’s first time in Charleston since 2019 when, on the presidential campaign trail, he visited to support the 50th anniversary of a 1969 strike of hospital workers at MUSC.
O’Rourke is a fourth-generation Texan, born and raised in El Paso where he’s served as a small business owner, a city council representative and a member of Congress. He founded and currently leads Powered by People, a Texas-based organization that works to expand democracy and produce Democratic victories through voter registration and direct voter engagement.
O’Rourke wrote We’ve Got To Try, he told the Charleston City Paper, initially as an attempt to understand why it’s so hard to vote in Texas and what it’s going to take to overcome that struggle. “The further back I went, I learned that what’s happening now is not without precedent,” O’Rourke said in a telephone interview.
Looking to the past to understand the present
“Some of the history I knew already, like the 2013 Supreme Court decision, Shelby County v. Holder [that] gutted the Voting Rights Act of 1965,” O’Rourke said. “That had huge implications for us in Texas — in and South Carolina — about voter suppression, voter intimidation and who the targets of that would be,” he said.
“No surprise, as has always been the case in American history, it’s Black voters, it’s voters of color, it’s young people who are the targets of this suppression, which effectively and functionally disenfranchises people from voting. Looking at this history helps to explain some of the outcomes that you have in Texas — like almost no one would be down for the total abortion ban that we have… We lead the nation in school shootings; almost two years since the Uvalde massacre and nothing’s been done.
“There are all these things that are just on their face, terrible, and often deadly for the people of Texas. I just know that if more people had the ability to vote and did vote, we’d have very different outcomes… So why is that not happening?”
In We’ve Got To Try, O’Rourke looks to the past to understand these current issues. He dedicates a large chunk of the book to shine a spotlight on the life and work of Dr. Lawrence Aaron Nixon. The son of an enslaved man, Nixon grew up in the Confederate stronghold of Marshall, Texas, before moving to El Paso, where he became a civil rights leader and helped to win one of the most significant civil and voting rights victories in American history: the defeat of the all-white primary. His fight for the ballot spanned 20 years and twice took him to the U.S. Supreme Court.
“Then I learned about Doctor Nixon, how he had this active faith in our democracy in 1924 — the year after the all-white primary law had been passed and signed into law — and he nonetheless pays his poll tax (a requirement to vote back in the day) even though he’s not going to be allowed to vote. He waits in line, presents his poll tax receipt, and is told that they can’t let him vote.
“And he says, ‘I know you can’t, but I’ve got to try.’ And so this guy for, for 20 years, continues to try to vote, takes his case all the way to the United States Supreme Court and ends up winning two really important victories,” O’Rourke said.
O’Rourke pointed to the lesson of persistence offered by Nixon.
“People like Lawrence Nixon, for their persistence and their determination and their hard work, were successful and ultimately brought about something like the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Nixon’s story is unknown to most people in this country, but he played this really important role … and so we’ve got to follow in that same spirit now.”
O’Rourke said he is purposefully bringing the book tour to places where the message often can feel bleak, he said.
“We’re choosing places that aren’t the places that Democrats typically go to,” such as stops in North Dakota, Michigan, Georgia, West Virginia and South Carolina.
“And in each place that I go to, including Charleston, we’re going to try to meet and work with folks who are registering voters, fighting this abortion ban or running for office. We want to do everything we can to boost their work, to encourage them, and find those great examples of people who are trying, despite the odds in Charleston — because it’s pretty tough right now to be a Democrat in South Carolina,” O’Rourke said, citing the fact that our state legislature is made up of 88 Republicans to 35 Democrats.
“And the Republicans are doing these deeply unjust and really ultimately unpopular things, like the abortion ban. But they have been able to gerrymander districts and to use the power that they have to really keep people from voting and participating… So the temptation to despair right now in South Carolina, and in Texas is very, very strong.”
The only way through, O’Rourke says in his book, is by maintaining faith, staying in the fight and winning political power.
“As long as we keep trying and keep fighting, ultimately we’re going to win. And I think it’s just really a matter of time and effort. The more effort we put in and the more faith, like Nixon, that we have in this system, then the shorter the time before we actually get to where we want to be, which is a full functioning democracy.”
Hear Beto O’Rourke talk at Blue Bicycle Books, 420 King St., at 4 p.m. on March 2. Tickets are free, with the option to pre-order a signed copy of We’ve Got To Try. Visit bluebicyclebooks.com.
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