Democratic Women of Comal County
Texas
PROGRESSIVE * POWERFUL * PERSISTENT
Beto O'Rourke
U. S. Senate
About Beto O'Rourke
“We should all have a chance to succeed…. It means that we are all treated with dignity and respect, meeting the small, petty and divisive politics of this age with a confidence, courage and strength that could only come from Texas. To get this done, we’re going to need a government that Texans can trust and a Senator who is focused on helping the people he’s elected to serve.”
--Beto O'Rourke
Beto O’Rourke is a fourth-generation Texan who was born and raised in El Paso. He returned to El Paso after graduating from Columbia University and working in New York for a few years. In El Paso he worked with others to establish Stanton Street, a successful technology company that created dozens of high-wage jobs. O’Rourke ran for El Paso City Council in 2005 and served two terms before running for U.S. Congress in 2012. He knocked on thousands of doors during this congressional campaign and defeated an eight-term incumbent.
In Congress, O’Rourke focused on working across the aisle in support of veterans’ healthcare and other issues. He has promoted bills that limit legislators’ ability to use PAC money in their campaigns and that would impose two-term limits on Senators and six-term limits on Representatives. O’Rourke has pledged to limit himself to two terms if he is elected to the Senate, and he is not taking PAC money in this race. He and his wife Amy are raising their three children, Ulysses, Molly and Henry, in El Paso.
O’Rourke champions rights for women, people with disabilities, and LBGT+ persons. He believes in supporting small businesses and farmers and in strengthening and enforcing anti-trust legislation. He believes in climate change and practical measures to protect the environment. He is a champion of public education. He supports a path to citizenship for DACA recipients and believes that immigrants who present at our borders should be treated fairly and humanely. O’Rourke favors sensible laws for gun safety. He believes that our country’s involvement in war should be debated and voted on by Congress, and he stresses that the U.S. Military should not bear the entire weight of U.S. foreign policy.
The United States Senate is the upper chamber of the United States Congress. Each state has two Senators who serve staggered six-year terms. Each is popularly elected by the entire state they represent.
O’Rourke’s opponent is Republican incumbent Ted Cruz. Cruz was a key actor in the 2013 government shut-down directed at holding up the budget in order to defund the Affordable Care Act. He is against abortion rights, same-sex marriage, and civil unions. He favors using public money to provide vouchers for private schools. He rejects the scientific consensus on climate change. Cruz has a history of conflict with his Republican colleagues in the Senate.