Analysis: Congressional Race (16th District of Texas)

The race for the congressional seat for the 16th District of Texas will be decided in less than a month. Congressman O'Rourke will rightfully be re-elected and by a large margin.

Neither of O'Rourke's opponents are viable challengers to the congressman for a myriad of reasons including election math, funding, policy positions, name ID, etc.

Congressman O'Rourke has far more campaign dollars available to him and he has the ability to raise more if necessary. It isn't so he won't have to, but he could if he had to.

There is no base or path to victory for either candidate to be considered viable. El Paso County votes heavily Democratic and there are few cross-overs. Even the people that still haven't gotten over the fact that O'Rourke defeated former congressman Silver Reyes don't number that many anymore so there's only a few yahoos out there that would flip and support someone from another party.

But the ones that did that in the first place were whack-jobs to begin with.

Neither Roen nor Perez have an area of town that is their base or stronghold. Mostly because they have branding problems.

Perez is seen as an opportunist who is simply looking for attention. He's been all over the board ideologically and isn't broadly liked or trusted. He doesn't inspire confidence in voters and has zero sense in terms of how to actually run a campaign. None what-so-ever.

What makes things worse for Perez is the fact that even the Libertarians in town aren't supporting him. They tend to lend their support to the GOP lately which is sort of a slap in the face to Perez considering he's the highest-profile Libertarian and the Libertarian that has run for the most offices.

Roen is a religious conservative. He has a strong military background but many of his positions are echos of empty Tea Party rhetoric. He faces the same challenges as Perez only he doesn't have the advantage of a Latino last name. Although to be fair, he doesn't have the disadvantage of the Libertarian affiliation either.

Roen doesn't have money, doesn't have a base, doesn't have a campaign mechanism, doesn't have name ID, and most of all doesn't have a chance.

Regardless of the fact that I don't agree ideologically with Roen and Perez the fact remains that they aren't viable candidates. They actually hurt one another by running because neither of them are taking votes away from O'Rourke. They are simply taking votes away from one another. Roen will be a distant second and he will benefit from a bump in Republican turnout that traditionally comes with a gubernatorial election cycle.

JOP will be a distant last place finisher. He will then likely write a press release about himself, speak about himself in the third-person, and then quote himself.

Bottom line here is that the outcome isn't in question. If O'Rourke were the least-bit vulnerable then the Old Guard of the Democratic Party would've tried to find someone to run against him. They haven't because they have all be thoroughly defeated.

The only real question about O'Rourke is if he's going to stick to the number of terms he said he'd serve.