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"Beto O'Rourke -- wrong on energy, wrong for Texas," the narrator says.
Cruz has resorted to this point on the campaign trail to appeal to his supporters. O’Rourke has also been vocal on the campaign trail about environmental regulations needing to be in place while also supporting oil production in Texas.
In an editorial interview with the Midland Reporter-Telegram, O’Rourke considers the natural gas production in the Permian Basin to be crucial not only for the state but as a way to replace coal-fire plants in India and China.
Jobs and wages are up.
Let's keep it that way.
Cruz circles back to an attack he has used before.
In Cruz's new TV ad, a narrator throws shade at O'Rourke for saying that "crossing the border illegally should not be a crime" and he would be "open to abolishing ICE." The narrator, in the second half of the ad, points to Cruz's record of introducing Katie's law to increase penalties for those who illegally renter the United Stated after being removed.
Cruz previously went after O'Rourke over this claim in another attack ad in August. PolitiFact recently looked into the Republican’s statement and found it to be mostly true.
In June, O'Rourke said he would be willing to abolish ICE. However, he is not willing to abolish the agency until its enforcement duties were assigned elsewhere.
The ad will begin airing in El Paso, Corpus Christi, Austin, Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, Harlingen and Laredo on Wednesday.
O’Rourke won the March Democratic primary but struggled to gain majority support in more than half of the state’s 32 counties along the border, the El Paso Times reported. The congressman frequently speaks Spanish on the campaign trail. In May, O'Rourke proposed six debates with Cruz - two of them in Spanish.
After a string of attack ads from Cruz, he comes out with a more upbeat and personal ad.
The senator hardly speaks in the nearly three-minute digital spot. Instead, he attempts to counter the momentum Beto O'Rourke has among young voters by having young people from various Cruz events talk about what they like about the Republican.
"I support Ted Cruz because of where he stands in protecting the liberties that Texans hold dear," says an 18-year-old supporter in the video. "Senator Cruz stands for what is right."
"I support @tedcruz because of where he stands on protecting the liberties Texans hold dear."
Cruz continues to attack O'Rourke for his stance on the NFL national anthem controversy. After the senator released a digital ad last month that served as an emotional appeal to patriotism, his team crafted a shortened version with sharper wording to run on TV.
The ad features former Marine Sgt. Tim Lee, who served in Vietnam, speaking at a Cruz campaign event: "I gave two legs for this country. I'm not able to stand, but I sure expect you to stand for me when the national anthem is being played."
Then comes the tag line: "In November, where will you stand?"
After a pro-Cruz super PAC released an ad last week accusing O'Rourke of using his El Paso City Council seat to facilitate redevelopment that would have entailed bulldozing homes, and benefited his father in law, Cruz takes his own shot at his opponent over this.
The campaign's 11th ad attacks the congressman by using footage from council meetings in 2007 and 2008 of citizens frustrated by what was happening.
"We feel betrayed and we feel sad. Especially with Beto," said one citizen in the video.
The two-minute ad ends with on screen text saying, "If Beto O'Rourke's own El Paso constituents couldn't trust him then, why would the rest of Texas trust him now?"
O'Rourke has faced numerous attack ads from pro-Cruz super PACs and the senator himself.
The congressman joked about the attacks at a fundraiser in Washington, calling them the “politics of fear.” Earlier in the day, O'Rourke broke away from the various versions of his original spot titled "Showing Up" and released his third TV ad.
Instead of attacking Cruz, the Democrat remains positive and focuses on the question he expects his three kids will ask in the future.
"When everything that mattered to us was on the line, where were you?'" O'Rourke says.
Roughly $315 million has poured into Senate and House races nationwide by super PACS and interest groups, hardly any of that in Texas before Labor Day.
That's when the onslaught began.
On Tuesday, two pro-Cruz super PACs went on the attack.
Club for Growth Action unleashed an ad denouncing "Beto the bully," accusing him of using his El Paso City Council seat to facilitate redevelopment that would have entailed bulldozing homes, and benefited his father-in-law.
The group initially put $200,000 into the spot, starting in San Antonio and adding Dallas and Houston as part of its "seven figure" assault to depict O'Rourke as "crooked."
Texans Are, a pro-Cruz group run by a former Cruz strategist, also hit O'Rourke. Its first ad, first reported by the Texas Tribune, calls him "reckless" on immigration and asserts that he's been "rolling out the red carpet for illegal immigrants" and "giving free reign to Mexican drug cartels."
On Labor Day, which O'Rourke spent campaigning in El Paso with the AFL-CIO, Cruz released his 10th ad. The online ad shows O'Rourke dropping F-bombs at campaign events around Texas, playing off his campaign theme, "Showing up" -- a poke at Cruz for jumping into the presidential race in near record time after joining the Senate. Cruz's version: "Showing the $@%* up."
"If Beto shows up in your town, maybe keep the kids at home," the narrator says.
On Aug. 28, Cruz released his ninth ad of the general election season, attacking O’Rourke for voting against tax relief for Harvey victims. The online ad — titled “Completely Ridiculous” — amplifies a line of attack the senator was already using on the stump.
O’Rourke has defended his vote, saying he opposed that bill because he wanted it to also address the looming expiration of the Children’s Health Insurance Program. He backed three other Harvey relief bills that became law, which Cruz’s attack glosses over. Cruz has been attacked for opposing federal aid when Hurricane Sandy walloped the Northeast six years ago.
When disaster struck just over a year ago, I helped lead the fight to bring home billons in disaster relief and pass bipartisan emergency tax relief for those hit by Hurricane Harvey. Congressman Beto O’Rourke? So irresponsible that he even voted against Hurricane Harvey tax relief.
O’Rourke went viral in a video saying he couldn’t think of anything more American than to “peacefully stand up or take a knee” in protest during the national anthem. On Monday, Aug. 27, Cruz accused him of being out of touch with Texas values and released a digital ad blasting him.
The ad features Tim Lee, a Texas Vietnam veteran, in an emotional appeal to patriotism.
On Aug. 3, Cruz released three attack ads and a fourth focused on the senator’s work in Texas after Hurricane Harvey.
“No official — state or federal — has been more involved in the recovery of Galveston County than Sen. Ted Cruz,” Galveston County Judge Mark Henry says in the Harvey spot.
In one Aug. 3 attack ad, Cruz touts a bill he supported to expand the drug-testing of applicants for unemployment benefits that President Donald Trump signed into law in March 2017. The ad contrasts that with a remark O’Rourke made in 2009 as an El Paso City Council member calling for a national discussion about legalizing narcotics. According to The Texas Tribune, the ad ran only in Lubbock.
A second attack ad Cruz released Aug. 3 goes after O’Rourke for being “more extreme than he wants you to know.” It asserts that O'Rourke wants to abolish U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (he did say at one point that he’s open to shifting ICE responsibilities to another agency), impeach Trump (true) and legalize all narcotics (also stemming from the 2009 City Council remarks, and not true).
O’Rourke is just “too reckless for Texas,” the ad says.
“We need a leader to stop the chaos at the border,” the ad says.
A 3-minute online ad from April 23 shows Cruz stumping on issues he deems most important to Texas voters — lower taxes; immigration and sanctuary cities; defending the Constitution; and protecting Second Amendment rights.
On April 3, nearly eight months after Hurricane Harvey hit Houston and the Gulf Coast, Cruz released a 2-minute digital ad focusing on Texans' coming together in a time of need.
“We’ve got a lot more that brings us together than divides us,” Cruz says.
It’s an uplifting spot with stirring music and clips of Cruz celebrating heroism and neighbors helping neighbors. Cruz grew up in Houston and still lives there, and he was a visible presence for months after the storm. Painting Cruz as a compassionate state leader, the ad intends to take the edge off perceptions that he’s a partisan bomb-thrower.
O’Rourke released his first ad of the general election season on July 26. The spot captures the excitement of the campaign trail and celebrates his unusual feat of stumping in all 254 Texas counties, some of which have more livestock than people.
The spot is titled “Showing up” — a theme that does double duty for O’Rourke as he casts himself as an accessible future senator and paints Cruz as an ambitious politician who had hardly settled in the Senate when he began running for president.
Cruz visited all 99 counties in Iowa during the 2016 presidential campaign, O’Rourke often reminds voters.
The Democrat’s campaign this month released TV ads it said will run in all 20 Texas media markets. The spots are largely the same as the earlier online version. Both use Facebook Live footage from the congressman’s travels across the state. The latest was released on Wednesday, Aug. 29.
“We have to do this with real people ... just human beings, real people making this happen,” O’Rourke said.
Cruz fired the first shot of the general election with a statewide radio ad on March 6, the night of the Texas primaries.
The jingle depicts O’Rourke as a gun-grabbing liberal and suggests that he took the nickname “Beto” to hide his Anglo roots and appeal to Hispanic voters. The senator, born Rafael Edward Cruz, has gone by “Ted” since he was a teenager. The challenger, born Robert Francis O’Rourke, has gone by “Beto” since he was a small boy growing up in El Paso. He quickly tweeted a photo of himself in a “Beto” sweater to prove it.
Cruz set his jingle to the tune of the 1984 hit by country music group Alabama If You’re Gonna Play in Texas (You Gotta Have a Fiddle in the Band).
So he changed his name to Beto and hid it with a grin.
Beto wants those open borders and he wants to take our guns.
Not a chance on earth he'll get a vote from millions of Texans.
If you're going to run in Texas you can't be a liberal man.
(Scott Sommerdorf | Tribune file photo) The Salt Lake City Council on Tuesay enacted changes to allow new accessory dwellings to be built more widely in residential areas across the city. John Armstrong, who hopes to build one on his mother’s property, posed in December next to her home near the site of the proposed dwelling. Based on a study of similar zoning changes in Portland and Denver, city planners estimate the new approach to ADUs could lead to between four and 25 new dwellings being built annually in Salt Lake City.
Location! Location! BIG VIEW building lot. 1.41 acres in Versant Gated community with nice mature trees and long range year around views. Minutes to downtown Asheville and Weaverville. Plateau on lot makes for easy building. Partial road cut in. Long road frontage. Underground utilities in place include gas, power, water, sewer, cable, internet, and phone. Woodfin taxes with an Asheville address. Let your creativity run wild and build your dream home. Geotechnical Report on file.
Before it became the site of Sunday's deadly mass shooting, the Route 91 Harvest festival was one of a handful of concert blowouts aiming to burnish the Las Vegas Strip's reputation as a live-music destination.
Jason Aldean, Eric Church and Sam Hunt were among the major country music stars performing at the sold-out, three-day festival at Las Vegas Village. Last month, the iHeartRadio Music Festival used the same outdoor space for its Daytime Village performances.
The 15-acre plot near Luxor and Mandalay Bay is one of two open-air venues on the Strip owned by MGM Resorts International.
For years, owners of the Village and the much larger Las Vegas Festival Grounds have been looking to turn the venues into preeminent destinations for music fans in a city boasting a seemingly unlimited supply of entertainment options.
Electric Daisy Carnival may be the king of Vegas festivals — it drew an estimated 400,000 EDM fans this year — but the event, which moved from Los Angeles in 2011, is anchored miles away from the glitz of the tourist-driven Strip.
Route 91 was one of the events trying to draw music fans closer to the Strip. The Live Nation-promoted concert did so by breaking ground as the first festival in Vegas strictly dedicated to country music.
Launched in 2014, Route 91 was a success out of the gate and served as an example of what could be pulled off on the Strip. In its inaugural year, when Aldean, Blake Shelton and Miranda Lambert headlined, the event lured 30,000 fans over three days to a parking lot that had been converted into a festival space. Last year, Route 91 attracted 25,000 guests per day.
Aside from the main stage, the festival promoted emerging acts on its Next From Nashville stage. It also featured line dancing and, because it's Vegas, nightclub-like lounges.
Route 91's success stands in contrast to MGM's attempt to up the festival ante with the massive, multi-genre Rock in Rio USA at the 40-acre Las Vegas Festival Grounds in 2015. Taylor Swift, Bruno Mars and No Doubt headlined the inaugural, two-weekend event.
The Las Vegas Festival Grounds, like the smaller Las Vegas Village, once housed vehicles: It served as a recreational vehicle campground for Circus Circus before MGM decided to diversify its entertainment offerings.
Anchoring a festival on the Strip came with a number of selling points that executives proudly touted: No port-a-potties, no camping in brutal heat and no snarled traffic in and out of festival grounds considering the tens of thousands of hotel rooms overlooking the Strip.
"This is not Coachella," Chris Baldizan, senior vice president of entertainment for MGM Resorts International, said ahead of Rock in Rio's 2015 launch. "People can have their usual Vegas stay … and then walk or take a shuttle to this great music festival and head back to the Strip, which will still be going on." He added that the festival grounds were "within walking distance of 80,000 hotel rooms."
Even so, Rock in Rio reported losses of up to $28 million and attendance figures well below the anticipated 328,000.
"Going to a new country, especially one as important as the U.S., we were afraid people might not like it," festival founder Roberto Medina told The Times during the inaugural weekend.
After Rock in Rio USA, the Festival Grounds have been mostly unused — with the exception of the Academy of Country Music's Party for a Cause Festival in April 2016. Recently, there was chatter that Route 91 would relocate to the larger property.
MGM executives were for it, arguing it would provide more growth, but promoters had a different idea: Stay put and set a manageable capacity of 25,000 guests.
"The 'look' of that site … is one of the things that makes Route 91 so great," Live Nation executive Brian O'Connell told the Las Vegas Review-Journal last year amid rumors of an impending move. "The casino's bright lights and that real Vegas look. You go north, you lose a little of that, and we don't want to lose Vegas. That's why we are here."
Being able to manage crowd sizes was crucial to Vegas' Life Is Beautiful festival, which continues to grow each year.
Now in its fifth year, the festival is spread over 18 blocks in downtown Las Vegas and merges music, food, art and creative expression over three days.
The festival, which has grown from 17,000 guests per day to 50,000 this year, has been successful at proving it's not impossible to do big business outside of the many residencies that power Vegas' entertainment. Last year, Life Is Beautiful was named Pollstar's 2016 Festival of the Year and Chance the Rapper, Lorde and Muse were among the marquee acts at the September event.
Some have attributed the festival's rise to organizers staying focused on its fundamental purpose — and not looking to expand its reach outside of the city.
"We made the decision to keep the fabric of it being an intimate, low-key festival experience," Justin Weniger, one of two organizers behind Life is Beautiful, said ahead of September's event.
"I grew up on Bonaroo and Coachella and these amazing festivals, but it gets harder to go out to a field or a desert," Weniger continued. "We wanted it to be relatively easy for people to get a flight and a less expensive hotel than other cities for festivals."
Ahead of last weekend's Route 91, MGM was hard at work planning on other uses for its larger festival grounds as executives hadn't yet given up on making both of its open-air venues a larger part of its entertainment portfolio.
"Entertainment is a huge component of our company," Baldizan said this past summer. "The biggest thing we learned is we have to be in it or not. We're going to dedicate a bit more of our resources to make festivals a bigger part of our experience."
Certainly many of those resources will be spent on beefed-up security. Whether that will be enough to ease music fans concerns is impossible to know in the immediate wake of Sunday's tragedy.
Rock in Rio debuts in Vegas to 82,000 fans: Did it deliver?
Deputy Superintendent Michael P. Thomas will take over as head of Brockton’s public school district on an interim basis starting July 1, when current Superintendent Kathleen Smith retires.
The School Committee said it wanted Thomas in the post to maintain continuity through the budget process and election season and then would revisit the superintendent position in a year.
In a statement, Smith said she was pleased with Thomas’s appointment. “I have great confidence in his leadership and offer my complete support as he prepares for this new role,” she said.
Thomas, a native of Brockton and 1987 graduate of Brockton High School, has worked for the district for 26 years.
He started as a physical education teacher in 1993 at what was then East Junior High School, and moved to Brockton High School in 2001 as head of the physical education program. He later became assistant dean and then dean at the high school, and in 2010, was promoted to executive director of operations for the district.
Thomas added the role of interim principal of Brockton High School for six months, before becoming deputy superintendent in 2013.
Former Brockton High School Principal Susan Szachowicz said the appointment is great news for students, families, and the community.
Brockton is the fourth-largest urban school district in Massachusetts with 17,000 students in prekindergarten through Grade 12.
LANCASTER COUNTY — Two Lancaster County law enforcement agencies are mourning the passing of K-9 officers on Friday.
Early Friday afternoon, Manheim Township Police announced that Ruger, the department’s first K-9 officer, has also reached the end of watch.