We've got to try How the fight for voting rights makes everything else possible

This offering from 2020 Democratic presidential hopeful Beto O'Rourke is hard to pin down. He identifies it as a book about voting rights, and provides historical perspective of issues that are crucial to his home state of Texas. These range from health care and educational disparities between rural and urban sectors to immigration laws and the border, all through the lens of voting rights. The book is also a quasi-memoir, as the author summarizes his advocacy and legislative actions to protect Texas voters' rights over the past decades, including a fair amount of politicizing and substantial attention paid to the shortcomings of Donald Trump's presidency. O'Rourke readily admits that Texas is known as the toughest state for voters, and claims that now is the last, best chance for change. The final chapters are devoted to exhortations for action, backed up by inspirational anecdotes that support his title's "We've got to try" sentiment. There are mentions of national-level policy makers (Thurgood Marshall, Lyndon Johnson), but most of the action involves Texas, which is perhaps a little shortsighted for someone who presumably plans to run again for the presidency. Still, the author has his supporters, so expect considerable interest.

The Texas politician places his progressive gubernatorial campaign against a backdrop of voter and civil rights activism. Thanks to a law signed by his opponent, Greg Abbott, in 2021, O'Rourke argues convincingly that it is now more difficult to vote in Texas than in any other state. This law and allied legislation, of course, were the result of the Trumpian trope that the 2020 election was stolen, and the votes so denied were those of non-White citizens, especially Black voters. "This accelerating attack on the right to vote is alarming but is not out of rhyme with what has come before," writes the author, whose title comes from an early voter rights activist in his native El Paso, a Black doctor named Lawrence Aaron Nixon who paid his poll tax annually and yet was not allowed to vote. Neither were any other Black or Hispanic voters, and when the Supreme Court ruled that this violated the 14th Amendment, Texas responded by passing laws that allowed political parties to determine who could cast a vote for their candidates. Richard Nixon persisted, and he "did what he knew had to be done," writes O'Rourke, adding, "now that we find ourselves facing the greatest threat to democracy since the crucial battles of the civil rights era, and nowhere more so than in Texas, we must look to the heroes of our past to guide us toward the victories that our country needs." The author's heroes are many, but he keeps his eye resolutely on the present and future, offering ideas for how to thwart the Texas GOP's current campaign of voter suppression, outlining a platform that includes health care and justice reform and changes in immigration policy "to reflect current demands and challenges"--not to mention "to organize pro-democracy Texans wherever I [can] find them." A rousing call for political action--and, not coincidentally, to vote for the author. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.