$2 Million Donation for O'Rourke and Key Highlights of the Democratic Convention

Beto O'RourkeScreenshot from Twitter

The campaign for Beto O’Rourke recently announced a record for fundraising by a Texas politician. And, a Texas couple made the largest donation to his campaign.

So, as the keynote speaker on Friday for the Texas Democratic Party Convention in Dallas, O’Rourke told The Dallas Morning News:

“We’ve got to bring everything that we have to this fight because we’re fighting for the people of Texas. I’m encouraged by the energy here, by the number of people who’ve contributed donations and money, but also their time. We have 70,000 volunteers strong and counting right now.”

O’Rourke had a good run the past few months fundraising. Now, the Texas Tribune reported an Austin couple added to his funds and had donated $1 million each for O’Rourke’s campaign against Texas Governor Greg Abbott.

Philanthropists and investors Simone and Tench Coxe gave O’Rourke his largest donations this year. Tench Coxe has supported both parties over the years. They gave a million earlier in the year and made another million dollar contribution but still nothing compared to what Billionaires have provided Abbott.

Simone Coxe said in an interview:

“We believe that state government is really important and we believe in good governance, and we believe good governance requires some checks and balances on the system. Looking at the way [Texas] is structured in terms of the gerrymandering … the only real opportunity to put a check on the state Legislature is through the statewide race, and we think Beto is an extraordinary candidate.”

After moving from Palo Alto, California to Austin in January 2021, Simone and Tench Coxe liked O’Rourke’s platform as he focused on the economy, health care, and public education.

Previously, Simone Coxe co-founded the public relations firm Blanc & Otus where she was CEO for 15 years. Recently she co-founded CalMatters, the California news nonprofit. Tench is a former venture capitalist.

When it comes to elections, they have supported both parties. Simone has mostly supported Democrats and gave to O’Rourke’s 2018 campaign. Then her husband, Tench, supported Mitt Romney’s campaign in 2012 and the Republican National Committee.

Simone Coxe said:

“We’re pretty middle of the road. We’re moderates, and I’m more of a liberal moderate than he is probably. But I think that’s how we would both describe ourselves. We need commonsense solutions.”

For O’Rourke’s election campaign, Simone Coxe said:

“I would make a distinction between special-interest large contributions and kind of general-people public interest. We have no agenda other than debate and dialogue.”

She added:

“No strings attached. Nothing we want out of anything other than good leadership.”

Priorities at the Democratic Convention

While at the Dallas Convention, Democrats emphasized they're fighting to protect a woman’s right to choose, voting rights, and to improve the reliability of the Texas power grid that O'Rourke mentioned here.

The Democratic nominee for Lt. Governor, Mike Collier said:

"I'm worried about the grid. We need to fix the damn grid and folks are concerned about public schools, property taxes are exploding. We have this crisis in Uvalde, which sines a very bright light on what we need to do which is to make sure our students and teachers are safe."

O’Rourke announced that his volunteers of 78,000 knocked on over 100,000 doors last month.

The former Representative from El Paso said:

"It is already far exceeded everything that we did in 2018, and in 2018, we had an amazing, amazing field team”.

The O’Rourke campaign is taking everything Abbott is throwing at him and trying to close the gap heading into November.

Do you think other high-net-worth people will donate to O'Rourke's campaign?