Beto O’Rourke Drew a Bigger Crowd Than Any Democrat Since Obama

It didn’t hurt that Willie Nelson was there, too.

Beto O'Rourke

Laura Roberts/Invision/AP

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On Saturday night, Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-Texas), who is challenging Sen. Ted Cruz in one of this year’s most competitive Senate races, held a much-anticipated campaign rally with country legend Willie Nelson in Austin. And, well, a few people showed up:

According to organizers, the event attracted 55,000 (presumably) supportersā€”more than any Democratic candidate has drawn for a single event since President Barack Obama was on the campaign trail.

O’Rourke, who was once a drummer in a punk rock band, joined Nelson on vocals for a new anti-Cruz ballad, “Vote ‘Em Out”:

O’Rourke, who trails the incumbent by 4.5 points in the RealClearPolitics polling average, was originally slated to debate Cruz for the second time Sunday, but the debate was postponed late last week when it appeared senators might need to remain in Washington for weekend votes on the confirmation of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. No makeup date has been scheduled yet; the final debate is on tap for October 16.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We canā€™t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

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Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who wonā€™t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its futureā€”you.

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Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

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