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.

We have a considerable $390,000 gap in our online fundraising budget that we have to close by June 30. There is no wiggle room, we've already cut everything we can, and we urgently need more readers to pitch in—especially from this specific blurb you're reading right now.

We'll also be quite transparent and level-headed with you about this.

In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

You're here for reporting like that, not fundraising, but one cannot exist without the other, and it's vitally important that we hit our intimidating $390,000 number in online donations by June 30.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. It's going to be a nail-biter, and we really need to see donations from this specific ask coming in strong if we're going to get there.

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