Update: 10:36 PM PST, 5/29/2012: With all precincts reporting, Beto O'Rourke has knocked off Rep. Silvestre Reyes with 50.47 percent of the vote to win the Democratic nomination. He's all but certain to win the November general election in his heavily Democratic district.] When a new congressman heads to Washington from Texas' 16th congressional district, he tends to stick around a while. The 16th, a border district that includes the city of El Paso, has been represented by just three men in 48 years; primary challenges are virtually unheard of. So it was noteworthy when, earlier this month, the area's largest newspaper asked its readers to fire eight-term incumbent Rep. Silvestr
n Reyes' place, the El Paso Times recommended Beto O'Rourke, a 40-year-old former El Paso councilman who's running neck and neck with the incumbent ahead of Tuesday's Democratic primary. O'Rourke is an outsider in two key respects. He is a white man of Irish decent in a district that's 77 percent Latino. And he is, as the author of a new book proposing the legalization of marijuana, an outspoken critic of federal drug policy. That makes O'Rourke's clash with Reyes more than just a story of an insurgent taking on the machine—in a border district, the contest is partly a referendum on the War on Drugs itself.

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The race should be close. The first poll conducted last September had O'Rourke, a web developer by trade whose father was a county judge, just 7 points back. A University of Texas–El Paso (UTEP) exit poll of early voting precincts had the race deadlocked (exit polls are highly imprecise, however).
In interviews and on the stump, O'Rourke emphasizes that he's not running as a pro-pot crusader; drug policy is one of a number of issues on which he feels the incumbent has been an empty chair. As a congressman, O'Rourke says he'll refrain from pushing through policies his constituents don't want. But it was the Drug War stance that made him a minor star, landing him speaking invitations at places like the Cato Institute and, in 2011, a book deal. Last November, two months after he kicked off his race against Reyes, O'Rourke and an ally on the city council, Susie Byrd, published a book, Dealing Death and Drugs, highlighting flaws in American drug policy and offering an array of prescriptions, including marijuana legalization.
"On the major issues that we understand better than anybody else—immigration, trade, drug policy, bilateral relations with Mexico," Reyes is "a zero," O'Rourke said in an interview with Mother Jones in March. "He's just not part of the conversation, much less leading it or bending it towards our region's interests." (The Reyes campaign did not respond to a request for comment.)
O'Rourke is getting help from the Campaign for Primary Accountability, the anti-incumbent super-PAC funded in part by TD Ameritrade founder Joe Ricketts. The group has spent $195,000 on television, radio, and direct mail attacking Reyes for voting to raise his own pay (a common CFPA trope) and granting a federal contract to a firm that hired three of his kids.
But Reyes hasn't exactly thrown in the towel. In April, he picked up endorsements from President Barack Obama and former President Bill Clinton. His campaign has highlighted O'Rourke's "checkered past"—a reference to a 1997 drunk-driving charge—and sought to portray O'Rourke's Drug War advocacy as hopelessly naive, if not flat-out dangerous. One 30-second Reyes TV ad, which aired during the Oscars, featured a series of precocious young children taking turns face-palming and shouting "No" as "Beto O'Rourke wants to legalize drugs" flashed across the screen: