Will Beto run for president in 2020?
It’s not official — but at this point, you can pretty much Beto-n him jumping into the race for the White House.
Former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke (Bovada +800|11.11%) released a statement on Wednesday that said he and his wife, Amy, have made a decision on whether O’Rourke will run for president in 2020 and plan to make an official announcement soon on his political future.
“Amy and I have made a decision about how we can best serve our country,” O’Rourke said in a statement reported by The Dallas Morning News. “We are excited to share it with everyone soon.”
A source close to the 46-year-old former congressman said he will not challenge Republican Sen. John Cornyn for his seat in Congress in 2020, making the chances of him launching a presidential bid all the more likely.
At the beginning of February, O’Rourke said he would make a decision on his political future by the end of the month and has done so with just a day remaining, even though his official decision has not been made public.
O’Rourke spoke to reporters in El Paso last week and suggested he might run for the Senate for a second time or seek the 2020 Democratic nomination for vice president alongside the party’s nominee for president, but he appears to have ruled both out.
Additionally, O’Rourke has become more vocal in the past couple months, gaining extra media attention and becoming one of the loudest Democrats criticizing President Donald Trump’s policies on immigration and his recently declared national emergency to secure funds to construct a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.
The three-time Democratic congressman and the current Republican President recently held rallies on the same night in O’Rourke’s hometown of El Paso, which saw Trump fill a stadium of 6,500 people with thousands remaining outside the venue in support of building a wall while O’Rourke and 10,000 to 15,000 people took to the streets in protest of one of the president’s biggest campaign promises.
O’Rourke gained national attention last year when he challenged Republican Sen. Ted Cruz for his seat during the 2018 midterms, raising a total of $80 million — an all-time high fundraising record for any Senate campaign. He would go on to lose his bid to unseat Cruz on Nov. 6, but only by 3 percentage points in a state that has traditionally voted red by a large margin.
With O’Rourke almost certainly in the 2020 presidential race, former Vice President Joe Biden would be the only remaining high-profile Democrat that has yet to throw his name into the huge field of candidates seeking the party’s nomination. Reports have come out recently that says Biden’s family supports a presidential bid, and that he is “very close” to making a decision on whether to run for president.