Former Rep. Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke (D-TX) said he is “excited” to share his decision on whether he will run for president in 2020, a Texas newspaper reported Wednesday.
According to the Dallas Morning News, O’Rourke has ruled out running for the U.S. Senate against incumbent Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) and is expected to announce his bid for the White House “soon.” “Amy and I have made a decision about how we can best serve our country,” O’Rouke told the Dallas Morning News, adding that the couple is “excited to share it with everyone soon.”
O’Rourke, who rose to national prominence with his attempt to unseat Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), has been the subject of intense 2020, repeatedly saying in recent weeks that he is thinking about how to “best serve the country.”
At a recent rally in his hometown of El Paso, O’Rourke took aim at President Donald Trump, who was rallying a few blocks away from the former congressman, railing against the president’s proposal to build an U.S.-Mexico border wall.
“Walls do not save lives. Walls end lives,” he told the crowd.
“In the last ten years, more than 4,000 children, woman, and men, have died trying to come to this country to work jobs that no one will take, to be with a family member, to flee horrific brutality, violence, and death in their home countries,” he continued, falsely claiming that Americans are unwilling to take blue-collar jobs.
Earlier February, O’Rourke even pledged to tear down the existing border wall if given the power to do so.
“If you could, would you take the wall down here now?” MSNBC Christopher Hayes asked O’Rourke in an interview near the border. “Yes, absolutely, I would take the wall down,” O’Rourke replied.
As leading Democrat presidential candidates such as Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) and Sen. Elizabeth crisscross the country with a jam-packed schedule of campaign events, some experts say O’Rourke’s time to mount his own bid may have passed.
“It seems like his star was fading,” Tim Hagle, a political scientist at the University of Iowa, told the Dallas Morning News. “That would be because he’s not in the news.”
“I don’t know that O’Rourke has missed his opportunity, but he does need to get in the race,” he added.
A recently released poll via Harvard CAPS/Harris places O’Rourke sixth among a slate of current of potential candidates. The poll, reported first by The Hill, shows former Vice President Joe Biden, who has not yet announced his bid for the White House, leads the pack of Democrats, with 37 percent of Democrat voters. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) came in second place at 22 percent, while Harris comes in third with 10 percent, according to the survey.