This is a first: Willie Nelson onstage with Sen. candidate BETO O'ROURKE singing pro-pot songs. [View all]

[pnwmom]

https://www.yahoo.com/news/beto-orourke-suicide-mission-ted-cruz-time-life-might-even-come-alive-090027508.html

It was shortly after noon on a recent Saturday, and O’Rourke, or simply “Beto” as voters here have come to know him, had been going since around dawn in what Republicans and even some Democrats here once described as a “suicide mission” to unseat the state’s junior senator, Ted Cruz.

He had just wrapped up his fourth stop of the day — a town hall in this small suburb south of Dallas, where he had addressed about 150 people, including an African-American woman who had stood and invoked Nelson Mandela to describe his unlikely quest as an unabashedly liberal Democrat to replace a Tea Party Republican in Texas. “They always said it was impossible until it got done,” the woman said, paraphrasing the legendary South African leader. Addressing the congressman, she said, “You’re about to do it.”

It was the kind of thing that people have been saying to O’Rourke, a lanky 6-foot-4 lawmaker whose undeniable charisma on the stump has invoked steady comparisons to a young Barack Obama by Democrats in search of their next great hope. A year ago, most people here had never heard of the 45-year-old, three-term congressman. But now, he was famous enough that a few days earlier, O’Rourke had found himself onstage strumming a guitar next to Willie Nelson — “THE Willie Nelson,” he said incredulously — at the singer’s annual Fourth of July picnic in Austin.

It was a turn of events that O’Rourke, who once toured the country playing bass in a punk band, still seemed a little stunned by. Showing a reporter a photo of him onstage with Nelson, he almost seemed to be reminding himself that it had really happened. O’Rourke, along with the singer Margo Price and Ray Benson, the legendary frontman from Asleep at the Wheel who had worn a “Beto” shirt onstage, joined Nelson for a medley of hits, including his pro-pot anthem, “Roll Me Up and Smoke Me When I Die.” And afterward, he had been given the stage to make his pitch to several thousand fans.