This might be the biggest question lingering over Beto O’Rourke: Just what does he believe, actually?
EL PASO, Texas — Is Beto O’Rourke the progressive icon who, during his Senate run against Ted Cruz, talked about legalizing marijuana and impeaching Donald Trump? Or is he the centrist Texan who, during his first run for the House, raised the possibility of making Social Security less generous for future retirees?
During that 2012 race, O’Rourke mentioned to the 19-year-old campaign assistant who was driving him around El Paso in a pickup truck that many people in his West Texas congressional district seemed to be worried about Social Security, the staffer recalled. As it happened, the assistant, Joey Torres, was reading Bill Clinton’s 2011 book,In it, Clinton discussed a method, suggested by the bipartisan Bowles-Simpson commission, to gradually raise the Social Security retirement age to 69.
The strategy worked. By the end of the campaign, Reyes became the only Texas incumbent to lose a primary in 2012. And O’Rourke won his first race for national office, the biggest credential in his likely presidential campaign less than a decade later.it is geographical, not ideological.
O’Rourke nodded. “A lot of it comes from just accepting that I’m not as smart as I want to be,” he said. “I’m more likely than not always not the smartest guy in the room. I haven’t figured it all out.” While listening to a pianist play late one recent night at a restaurant in the city’s downtown, Steve Ortega, a friend of O’Rourke who served on the City Council with him, tried to sum up O’Rourke’s approach to politics. “In El Paso, he’s viewed as very progressive,” Ortega said. “And El Paso knows him.”
O’Rourke’s advisers, Bobby Byrd said, were worried about drawing renewed attention to O’Rourke’s position on marijuana. The book’s cover carried another, unmistakably clear, subtitle: “An Argument to End the Prohibition of Marijuana.” He recalled that O’Rourke told him, “You’re right.” The book’s publication went forward as scheduled. “When we left the conversation off, I felt really good about Beto,” Byrd said. “The interesting thing about Beto is he talks to people.”
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