Even after beating O’Rourke, Cruz’s chief strategist, Jeff Roe, stands impressed. “The Democrats don’t have anybody like him,” Roe said. “I’ve seen all of them. They don’t have anyone of his caliber on the national stage. I pray for the soul of anyone who has to run against him in Iowa in 453 days.”

As it happens, O’Rourke’s barnstorming campaign style, which took him to every county in Texas, is the same retail-intensive approach that has traditionally worked in the state’s first-in-the-nation caucuses. Rick Santorum famously won the 2012 Republican caucuses after visiting all 99 of Iowa’s counties in a pickup truck, a feat O’Rourke matched this year in Texas’ 254 counties with the aid of rented minivans.

“He’s been running the kind of campaign in Texas which is exactly what causes one to be successful in Iowa, which is going around to all of Iowa and sitting down and talking to folks,” said Bonnie Campbell, a former Iowa attorney general who remains active in the state’s Democratic politics.