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The California Report

Beto O'Rourke Is California Bound

The former Texas congressman hopes to tap into the same kind of enthusiasm for his 2020 presidential run as he generated in his 2018 race for the U.S. Senate.
Scott Shafer
Former Texas Congressman Beto Rourke will make his first California swing since announcing his run for president.  (Paul Ratje/AFP/Getty Images)

Former Texas Congressman Beto O'Rourke, whose closer-than-expected race last year for the U.S. Senate against incumbent Republican Sen. Ted Cruz gave Democrats heart flutters, is planning his first swing through California since announcing last month that he was running for president.

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O'Rourke is starting his four-day California visit Saturday afternoon with a rally at the Los Angeles Trade-Tech College. On Sunday he travels north to San Francisco for a town hall meeting slated to start at 11:30 a.m. at the United Irish Cultural Center in the city's Sunset neighborhood.

Monday's plans are yet to be formally announced, although campaign aides say he'll likely visit "places other candidates have ignored" such as the Central Valley.

O'Rourke's trip is scheduled to wrap up Tuesday with a town hall in San Diego starting mid-morning.

Like others in a Democratic field that will soon top 20, O'Rourke has a relatively thin resume. He began his political career on the City Council in El Paso, Texas. He served two terms there before winning a seat in Congress in 2012 by knocking off a 16-year incumbent in the Democratic primary before winning the general election.

He was re-elected to the House of Representatives twice, but declined to seek another term in 2018, choosing instead to challenge Sen. Cruz. He lost narrowly, 50.9 to 48.3 percent while setting a record for the number of votes cast for a Democrat in Texas.

O'Rourke, whose youthful looks and toothy smile have been compared to the Kennedys, tapped into his party's yearning for fresh faces in the age of Trump, raising a record $80 million in his Senate campaign, much of it from small donors. He's hoping to replicate that formula this time, and he raised an impressive $9.4 million in the 18 days after he joined the presidential race.

But O'Rourke has stumbled a bit in the early days of his presidential campaigns, angering women by saying is wife Amy did most the work raising their three young children and also for saying he was "born to be in it" in a Vanity Fair profile. He later expressed regret for the comments and suggested a woman would be on the ticket with him if he wins the nomination.

O'Rourke is considered somewhat moderate, at least by the standards of today's Democratic party, where presidential candidates are embracing policies like "Medicare for All" and higher taxes on the wealthy. According to a political scaling system known as DW-NOMINATE, O'Rourke's votes made him more conservative than 77 percent of the Democrats in Congress during his last term in Washington.

A recent poll from Quinnipiac University shows O'Rourke is still relatively unknown in California, trailing far behind former Vice President Joe Biden, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and California Sen. Kamala Harris, who are the top preferences of Democrats and Democratic-leaning voters in the state. The California primary is March 3, 2020.

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