Beto O'Rourke, Ted Cruz agrees to debate 3 times in the fall

By Jeremy Wallace, Houston Chronicle

updated

16h58 CDT, Friday 14th September 2018

Republican Ted Cruz and Democrat Beto O'Rourke will debate after all.

The US Senate campaign ended with statements Friday night, confirming that they had accepted three debates before the November 6 elections. They will be in Dallas, Houston and San Antonio and each will last one hour.

The first panel will be held on September 21 at the Southern Methodist University in Dallas and will focus on domestic politics. The second debate will take place at the University of Houston and will be a town hall style debate. The final debate will take place in San Antonio in a studio to be determined.

Only a few weeks ago, the debates seemed unlikely in what has become one of the most competitive Senate races in the country. O'Rourke and Cruz both called for debate, but the two sides could not agree on the details. Cruz wanted five debates, and only on Friday night, in the cities and with the moderators chosen by O'Rourke. O'Rourke wanted more debates, including one entirely in Spanish, which Cruz does not speak as fluently as he would like, he said.

Negotiations resumed at the end of August, when Cruz and O'Rourke, in separate talks, acknowledged that they were trying again to reach an agreement.

Cruz, a former champion of college debate, has 20 major debates under his belt since the presidential campaign of 2016 and from 2012 when he faced a vast Republican field for the Senate, including Donald Trump. O'Rourke has never debated on a state-wide stage, but gets something that challengers rarely get, an agreement to debate with the outgoing president. Many other Democrats who run the state have not yet had a debate with their Republican rivals.

The debate agreement came as polls showed a run closer than expected in early 2018. O Rourke, a member of the El Paso Congress since 2012, relied heavily on social media for make his campaign a national candidate. Talk shows. Cruz, once a prohibitive favorite and a Trump finalist for the 2016 GOP President nomination, now tells his fans that they will face a real battle in November in this traditional Republican state and must make sure that conservatives enough to match the democratic anger against Trump.