Former Congressman Beto O’Rourke ignored a call from the Houston Chronicle on Wednesday to exit the presidential race to run for Senate.
“Drop out of the race for president and come back to Texas to run for senator,” the Chronicle wrote in an editorial titled “Beto, come home.”
“The chances of winning the race you’re in now are vanishingly small. And Texas needs you,” it read.
In response, O’Rourke’s campaign said in a statement Wednesday that he would return to the 2020 presidential campaign on Thursday and deliver a major speech.
“Imagine the effect you could have on our state,” the editorial read. “Ideas get sharper when they’re challenged when points of view clash. We think Texas will get smarter, and its politics more sophisticated, if campaigns here were a true test of ideas, not one-sided races set to autopilot.”
O’Rourke failed to beat Sen. Ted Cruz in the 2018 midterm elections, losing by less than three points.
After the campaign, O’Rourke felt his surging national popularity and media profile could propel a run for president.
Many Texas Democrats want him to, instead, run against Sen. John Cornyn in 2020.
O’Rourke is only polling nationally at three percent, according to the Morning Consult Democrat primary tracker.
He is doing even worse in early primary state polls.
In Iowa, he is polling less than one percent; in New Hampshire, he is polling at two percent; and in South Carolina, he is polling at one percent.