Beto O’Rourke ignites Democrat presidential race with homespun video

No big rally or thumping speech: Beto O’Rourke enters the Democrat presidential race in typically unorthodox way.

Beto O'Rourke's homespun video announcement. Picture: YouTube.

True to form, Beto O’Rourke today became the most talked-about Democrat contender for US president in the most unorthodox way.

There was no large rally festooned with placards to announce he was running, but rather a homespun video with his wife Amy at their El Paso home in which the 46-year-old former Congressman promised “a positive campaign” to “unite a very divided country.”

“The challenges that we face right now, the interconnected crises in our economy, our democracy and our climate, have never been greater, and they will either consume us or they will afford us the greatest opportunity to unleash the genius of the United States of America,” Mr O’Rourke said.

Hours later Mr O’Rourke was standing on a chair in a coffee shop in the key primary state of rural Iowa, speaking about his plans to improve heath care, fight climate change and restore America’s relations with its allies and its place in the world.

Mr Trump was watching and teased the way Mr O’Rourke gesticulated. “I think he’s got a lot of hand movement,” Mr Trump said. “Is he crazy or is that just the way he acts?’

Mr O’Rourke is the 15th Democrat so far to run for president, but he is likely to rival the frontrunners because of the enormous hype that surrounds the charismatic and photogenic father of three.

Many young Democrats see Mr O’Rourke as their best hope for a generational change in American politics. They want him to be their new John F Kennedy, the candidate who best captures the mood of those who seek a vibrant and youthful alternative to the polarising presidency of Donald Trump.

Whether he can do that is far from clear. His six years as a Democrat congressman produced little in the way of concrete results, and while he captured national attention with his strong bid to unseat Republican Senator Ted Cruz in the mid-term elections, he still lost. He has never been tested on the national stage in the way that a US presidential campaign will test him.

But after months of agonising over whether to run in 2020, he has decided to join the crowded campaign running on a theme of national unity and change, telling Vanity Fair: “Man, I’m just born to be in it and I want to do everything I humanly can for this country at this moment.”

Beto O’Rourke isn’t cut from regular presidential cloth. Picture: AFP.

Beto O'Rourke’s profile in Vanity Fair was timed to coincide with his entry into the presidential race.

Mr O’Rourke is a Gen X candidate who is hardly cut from regular presidential cloth. The son of a domineering father who was a local politician in the Texas border town of El Paso and a mother who owned a furniture store, Beto was a teenage punk rock fan who eventually played in his own band. He graduated in English Literature at New York’s Columbia university and then took various jobs such as a live-in caretaker and art mover in New York while trying to work out what he wanted to do with his life.

Eventually O’Rourke moved back to El Paso, but in 1998 he was arrested for drunk driving, a charge he says he has been “very open about.”

Eventually he found his passion in local politics and discovered that he had an innate talent for campaigning, winning a seat on the El Paso City Council. In 2012 he ran for Congress, reported knocking on 16,000 doors to win his own party’s nomination and then to defeat his Republican opponent.

But he was still relatively unknown until he attracted national attention for his unorthodox Senate campaign last year against the conservative Republican Senator Cruz in a state which had not elected a Democrat Senator since 1994.

Mr O’Rourke again showed his campaigning strengths, visiting all of Texas’ 254 counties and running on a surprising liberal platform in such a conservative state which included legalising marijuana, fighting climate change and endorsing pro-choice policies.

His campaign was best described as social media grassroots. Mr O’Rourke live-streamed much of his travels across Texas, including skateboarding in a parking lot and other banal moments. Many of these went viral and garnered him an enormous online following. He has continued to put routine moments of his life-on line, even including him in a dentist chair — a move which saw him ridiculed by opponents.

The key question for Mr O’Rourke will be to tell Americans what he stands for. Unlike many of his fellow Democrat contenders, Mr O’Rourke doesn’t like to identify as either liberal or centrist in his policies.

Compared with the policy-heavy announcements of his Democratic presidential rivals such as Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, Mr O’Rouke is still vague about the details of his platform. Even his supporters are not entirely sure what he stands for.

Beto O’Rourke addresses a public event in Austin last year. Picture: AFP.

Yesterday and also in the Vanity Fair profile which was timed to coincide with his announcement, Mr O’Rourke offered more insight that usual about the basic principles that will guide him.

On health care, he wants to shore up Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act to move towards making “health care for all” a reality. He wants to legalise the use of marijuana across the country and once co-wrote a book arguing this would reduce the power of Mexican drug cartels.

He said yesterday he would make fighting climate change a key priority. He backed the ambitious but contentious plan put out by left-wing Democrats called the Green New Deal backed which calls for the US to get 100 per cent of its power needs through renewable and “zero-emission” energy sources within a decade.

On China, Mr O’Rourke backed Mr Trump’s actions in calling China out its unfair trading practices but did not support his trade war to achieve his aims. He talked about how the Trump tariffs had hurt American farmers.

Mr O’Rourke said the US needs to take on China together with its allies but that Mr Trump’s leadership had harmed America’s relationship with its allies. He said he wants to “reassert global leadership and end these decade long wars.”

Mr O’Rourke says he is pro-choice, supports higher taxes of the wealthy and is pro-gun control, backing a ban on assault rifles.

Unlike Bernie Sanders who calls himself a Democratic Socialist, Mr O’Rourke says he is a “proud capitalist.”

On immigration, Mr O’Rourke who speaks fluent Spanish and has grown up with Mexicans in the border city of El Paso, is opposed to Mr Trump’s border wall. He disputed the president’s claim that crime in El Paso fell sharply after borders barrier were erected near the city and recently he held a rival rally in that city to Mr Trump who was holding his own rally at the same time.

Mr O’Rourke said yesterday he didn’t “necessarily” believe there was a problem on the US-Mexican border and claimed that immigration was ‘the best possible problem this country can have.’

He argues that one strength of his candidacy is his ability to unite both Republicans and Democrats at a time of deep division in the country.

“I may have an ability to work with people who think differently than I do, come to a different conclusion that I’ve come to on a given issue, and yet find enough common ground to do something better than what we have right now,” he says.

He says his campaign will send a positive message about change and his own beliefs rather than a negative campaign attacking Mr Trump.

“(I want) “a positive campaign . . . to bring out the very best in every single one of us,” he says.

“This moment of peril produces perhaps the greatest moment of promise for this country and for everyone inside of it.”

Cameron Stewart is also US Contributor for Sky News Australia