Robert Francis "Beto" O'Rourke (26 September 1972-) was a member of the US House of Representatives (D-TX 16) from 3 January 2013 to 3 January 2019, succeeding Silvestre Reyes and preceding Veronica Escobar. In 2018, his unsuccessful bid for the US Senate drew national attention, and he briefly ran for President in 2020.
Biography[]
Beto O'Rourke was born in El Paso, Texas in 1972, the son of an El Paso County judge. He was a member of the band Foss during the early 1990s, playing bass, and he worked for Internet service providers in New York City after graduating from college. In 1999, he founded Stanton Street Technology in El Paso, developing websites and software. He served on the El Paso City Council from 2005 to 2011, and he was elected to the US House of Representatives in 2012. He was a member of the centrist New Democrats. In 2018, he won the Democratic Party's nomination for the US Senate election in Texas. However, he narrowly lost the election to Republican incumbent Ted Cruz. He was widely seen as a potential presidential candidate due to his wide support among young people, and he entered the Democratic presidential primary in 2019. He emerged as one of the eight frontrunners in a race of 20 people, and he engaged in heated debates with Julian Castro about immigration laws; O'Rourke disagreed with decriminalizing illegal immigration, while Castro supported open borders. In the aftermath of a white supremacist terrorist attack in El Paso on 3 August 2019, O'Rourke called for a complete ban on the sale and possession of assault rifles and supported a mandatory buyback program, drawing a wave of conservative and gun rights criticism on social media. On 1 November 2019, O'Rourke suspended his presidential campaign before the primaries began, and he announced that he would not be running for any positions in 2020, dashing hopes that he would run for Senate against Republican incumbent John Cornyn.
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