November 6, 2018

Holding Back Tears, 77-Year-Old Voter Explains Exactly Why She’s Voting for Beto O’Rourke

“He represents everything Donald Trump isn’t.”

As Beto O’Rourke arrived at an El Paso polling station Tuesday morning, there was one woman watching intently nearby, hopeful that she’d soon witness Texas electing its first Democrat in a statewide race in over two decades.

“We think he’s pretty important and we’re honored that he was here,” 77-year-old Pamela Aguirre told MSNBC reporter Garrett Haake, who, before the interview, had spotted Aguirre sporting an O’Rourke t-shirt while wheeling her oxygen tank.

The clip, which has since gone viral, shows Aguirre becoming visibly emotional as she discussed her surprise to see O’Rourke at the same polling station that morning, as well as the personal significance of his candidacy.

When Haake asked her to explain her support for Sen. Ted Cruz’s Democratic challenger, Aguirre pointedly explained, “Cause he represents everything that Donald Trump isn’t.” 

“What will it feel like if you see him win this race tonight?” Haake continued.

“Everything, just everything,” she responded fighting back tears. “We want him to win, and we’ll be watching the TV tonight with him. He’ll be someplace in the city, but it’ll just mean so much, it’ll mean that by gosh, we all still have a chance to have a decent country with decent values, with decent relationships with other people.”

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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 can’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.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

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