As hope for federal voting rights rescue dims, state Democrats, advocates turn up the heat

"If anything, Manchin raised the stakes on how much energy we're putting into this."In interviews, more than a half-dozen prominent advocates of the legislation promised more lobbying, marches and ad campaigns and a summer of pressure that would seek to persuade Manchin and others to defy Republican opposition, change the filibuster rules and pass the legislation.Beto O'Rourke, the Texas Democrat who narrowly lost a Senate race in 2018 and has been hosting voting rights events around the state, said he believes the group will bring "much-needed courage and backbone" to the fight in Washington this week."I hope those Texas state House Democrats are able to show their colleagues in the U.S. Senate the way to fight," he said Sunday.He said he plans to draw more than 10,000 voters for a rally Sunday night at the Texas Capitol in Austin, featuring the Texas legislators after their week of lobbying in Washington. The Senate is expected to vote on the For the People Act for the first time next week."It is absolutely clear that only Congress can definitively stop this vote suppression and restore fair elections," said Wendy Weiser, vice president of the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law.Nsé Ufot, who leads the New Georgia Project and is working with advocates in West Virginia to pressure Manchin at home, said Manchin's op-ed was "a sign that it's time to escalate, not that the fight is over.""I refuse to believe that one conservative Democrat is literally what is going to bring down the entire American government and the sort of 200-plus-year experiment in democracy," Ufot said.Stacey Abrams' Fair Fight Action is reported to be planning a "Hot Call Summer" effort, with plans to text 10 million people in states with voting restrictions on the books or under consideration, to rally support for the For the People Act.Black Voters Matter is kicking off a bus tour dubbed the Freedom Ride for Voting Rights from Mississippi to Washington, D.C., this month, a nod to the Freedom Rides of the 1960s civil rights movement.A prominent civil rights leader, the Rev. William J.