LUBBOCK, Texas — More than 1,000 people attended Beto O’Rourke’s town hall meeting at the Science Spectrum Thursday evening, according to official counts by their campaign.

The showing was the largest Lubbock crowd yet for the Democratic candidate for governor, who also hosted town halls in December and March.

“The fact that this many people came out this far away from an election… this is a really good sign for our campaign,” O’Rourke said. “It’s a great sign, in my opinion, for the state of Texas.”

The campaign stop was part of his “Drive for Texas,” a 49-day tour with more than 70 events. The tour places a unique emphasis on rural Texas, a strategy O’Rourke argued sets him apart from Gov. Greg Abbott.

“[Gov. Abbott] is taking rural Texas for granted,” O’Rourke said. “So not only is he not going to run up the score in rural Texas, I think he’s in for a big surprise on Election Night when we do better than any Democrat has done in rural Texas in decades.”

The stop followed a midday town hall in Snyder at the Scurry County Library. Two-hundred people attended the event, the largest and one of the very few political campaign stops their town of 11,200 has seen. While most of the attendees came in support, about 10 percent of the crowd donned “Make America Great Again” hats and held critical signs. O’Rourke fielded questions from both political parties and the event remained civil.

“Folks who were for me, folks who were against me, I took every question. Everybody was welcome. They haven’t seen their representatives do that. They haven’t seen the governor do that,” O’Rourke said. “I hope that we’re going to show others who want to win elected office, others who are already in office, that they’ve got to pay attention to rural Texas. This community, these counties, have been taken for granted by the people in power.”