If you don’t see a shared interest or shared opportunity to advance, then we’ll no longer see ourselves in this together and this country will truly break apart. This level of gross income inequality cannot persist, and if there’s a better way to get there, I’m open to it. But it’s definitely going…
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Beto O'Rourke
Robert Francis "Beto" O'Rourke (; born September 26, 1972) is an American businessman and politician who represented Texas's 16th congressional district for three terms in the United States House of Representatives. A native of El Paso, Texas, O'Rourke served on the El Paso City Council from 2005 to 2011. O'Rourke was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 2012 after defeating incumbent Silvestre Reyes in a Democratic primary. O'Rourke declined to seek re-election to the House in 2018 and instead ran for U.S. Senate. As the 2018 Democratic U.S. Senate nominee, O'Rourke was narrowly defeated by Republican incumbent Senator Ted Cruz. On March 14, 2019, he announced his candidacy for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States in 2020. 2Early life Robert Francis O'Rourke was born on September 26, 1972, at Hotel Dieu Hospital in El Paso, Texas, to Pat Francis O'Rourke and his second wife Melissa Martha O'Rourke (née Williams). He has Irish and Welsh ancestry. His family gave him the nickname in infancy "Beto", a common Spanish nickname for first names ending in "-berto", initially to distinguish him from his namesake grandfather.His mother owned a furniture store, and is the stepdaughter of Fred Korth, Secretary of the Navy under President John F. Kennedy. His father, Pat O'Rourke, served in El Paso as County Commissioner and County Judg
I didn’t want to make money, didn’t want to be in business. My dad was so disappointed. He took out [college] loans, he knew that I took out loans. I was like, ‘You know, I wanna make art. I wanna write. I wanna make music. I wanna create things.’
I just don’t get turned on by being against. I really get excited to be for. That’s what moves me. It’s important to defeat Trump, but that’s not exciting to me. What’s exciting to me is for the United States to lead the world, in making sure that the generations that follow us can live here.
My sense is, following some success that I had in Congress, and working with Republicans to actually get things signed into law, including both President Obama and President Trump’s administrations, that I may have an ability to work with people who think differently than I do, come to a different…
She does not seem to me to be afraid of making a mistake, or not saying it perfectly, and in the process says the most important—I think some of the most important—things anyone can be talking about right now, and she’s freed herself from fear.
If I bring something to this, I think it is my ability to listen to people, to help bring people together to do something that is thought to be impossible.
I don’t ever prepare a speech. I don’t write out what I’m going to say. I remember driving to that, I was, like, ‘What do I say? Maybe I’ll just introduce myself. I’ll take questions.’ I got in there, and I don’t know if it’s a speech or not, but it felt amazing. Because every word was pulled out of…
I think that’s the beauty of elections: You can’t hide from who you are. The more honestly and directly you communicate to people why you’re doing this, the way in which you want to serve them, I just think that the better, more informed decision that they can make.
I'm going to continue to demonstrate that everyone in every state is important to the future of this country. And no one can be written off or taken for granted based on where they live or how they voted in the past, or whether they voted at all.
I say what I think and what I believe. I have the courage of my convictions, and I’m also hopefully smart enough to know there’s so much more for me to learn. And I can only learn by listening to the people of this country. They will be my consultants.
I want to be president because I feel that we can bring this country together. We can unify around our ambitions, our aspirations, the big things that we know we are capable of when all of us have the opportunity to contribute.
We are making a stand for truth against lies and hate and ignorance and intolerance. We are going to show the country who we are. We're going to make a stand to ensure that we live up to our promise, to our potential, to our purpose as a country. They will either consume us, or they will afford us…
This is a defining moment of truth for this country and for every single one of us. The challenges that we face right now, the interconnected crises in our economy, our democracy and our climate have never been greater.
I think I was able to show by going to every single county that we will leave no one behind, that no one will be forgotten, that every single one of us as an American and as a human being is important, and we will pay the respect necessary to show that and ensure that.
I have a profoundly positive story to tell that as a nation of immigrants, we should remind ourselves that our success, our strength and yes, our safety and security, depend on the fact that we are a city of immigrants in El Paso, a nation of immigrants across this country.
You'll see us run the largest grassroots campaign this country has ever seen. It's the only way to win. It's the only way to effectively govern.
I'm confident that 2020 is going to produce a significant change, not just in the White House, but in both houses of Congress. I think that Democratic majority on immigration, on healthcare, on a more inclusive economy, on confronting the challenge of climate before it's too late is going to be able…
The kind of hatred and open racism that we're seeing in this country is having not just a corrosive result. It's—it's a deadly consequence. And we saw that on full display in El Paso yesterday.
I'm saying that President Trump has a lot to do with what happened in El Paso yesterday. Anybody who begins their campaign for the presidency by calling Mexican immigrants rapists and criminals. Anyone who as president describes asylum seekers at the U.S.-Mexico border as an infestation or an…
This is really about hatred and racism and intolerance that continues to grow in this country. Hate crimes on the rise for each of the last three years, division being sown by this president's hatred being welcomed during his administration. All of us must stand up against this and for a much…