Former Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-TX) is restarting his 2020 presidential campaign Thursday after spending time in his hometown of El Paso in the wake of the mass shooting, and plans to unveil a change in tactic.
According to the New York Times, O’Rourke will invest less of his time in the early voting states — Iowa, New Hampshire — to instead make his campaign solely about combatting injustice born from President Donald Trump’s policies. He plans to make his first stop in Mississippi, where a massive ICE raid took place last week.
He said that he came to the new way of doing things after declining an invitation to the Iowa State Fair right after the El Paso massacre, saying that that kind of politicking didn’t match the “urgency” of the moment.
“I don’t know that I’ve been doing a good enough job to match that threat with the urgency and the honesty and the clarity that it deserves,” O’Rourke said of the danger poised by the Trump administration. “Being with those who have been denigrated and demeaned is more important than it has ever been.”
O’Rourke earned attention and plaudits from Democrats for his raw, emotional and often profanity-laden reaction to the shootings last weekend.
