Democrat Beto O'Rourke has lost three bids for office in four years and now questions are being raised whether his political career is finished.
O'Rourke was defeated by incumbent Gov. Greg Abbott in Tuesday's election for Texas governor. He lost a bid for the Senate in 2018 in a race against Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and he dropped out of the 2020 race for the Democrats' presidential nomination.
"With each new race he loses it becomes more difficult to convince voters and persuade them that he can still win the next race," Sharon Navarro, a political scientist at the University of Texas at San Antonio, said, according to The Texas Tribune. "That's a very difficult barrier to overcome for a third-time loser."
Corbin Casteel, a Republican consultant, added: "He's a perennial candidate. He hasn't shown any ability to win outside his hometown, and his ideas are just way too radical for Texas, and he keeps getting rejected left and right."
In his Tuesday night concession speech, O'Rourke alluded to his political future.
"I don't know what my role or yours will be going forward, but I'm in this fight for life," O'Rourke told his supporters. "Who knows what's next for any of us, right? But I just cannot thank you enough."
Other political experts told the Tribune they do not anticipate O'Rourke totally dropping out of politics.
"For Democrats, you want to ride your fast horse until you get a faster one," said Cal Jillson, a political scientist at Southern Methodist University. "Until you find someone better than Beto, what would be the point of exiling him into the wilderness for someone that has the skills and fundraising ability?"
Matt Mackowiak, a GOP consultant, said O'Rourke has not made the necessary adjustments he needed to put together a winning campaign since first running for statewide office in 2018, the Tribune noted.
"It's not clear that Beto has learned anything from his three losses," he said. "He's learned how to organize, how to raise money and fire up the progressives, but none of those things have delivered victory."
O'Rourke lost to Abbott by nearly 11 percentage points, with 99% of the vote reported. He suffered this loss despite raising $77 million and spending $72 million as of Oct. 29. In July, O'Rourke broke the state's four-month fundraising record when he hauled in $28 million.
Meanwhile, the Tribune pointed out that a comeback by O'Rourke would not be unprecedented in Texas politics. Democrat Ralph Yarborough mounted three failed campaigns for governor between 1953 and 1956. However, he was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1957.