WESTERVILLE, Ohio — Beto O’Rourke and Pete Buttigieg, two young newcomers to the national spotlight, are using disagreements on gun policy as a backdrop in the battle to become the preferred fresh face for Democrats.
The two candidates sparred over confiscation of military-style rifles, what O’Rourke calls “mandatory buybacks,” on the Democratic debate stage Tuesday night.
“We can’t wait for purity tests, we have to just get something down done,” Buttigieg said of O’Rourke’s plan.
“This is not a purity test,” O’Rourke said. “This is a crisis. We’ve got to do something about it. Those challenges you described are not mutually exclusive to the challenges that I’m discussing.”
“The problem isn’t the polls, the problems is the policy. I don’t need lessons from you on courage, political or personal,” Buttigieg said.
O’Rourke, a 47-year-old former Texas representative, rode the momentum of his failed 2018 Texas Senate campaign into a presidential campaign announcement and made a splash with his first-day fundraising. But his cash haul and polling numbers quickly faded as South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Buttigieg, 37, reported massive fundraising numbers and received ample media attention.
When he was running for Senate in Texas last year, O’Rourke opposed confiscation of military-style weapons but announced his support for the policy after a mass shooting in his hometown of El Paso in August that killed 22 people. During the September debate, O’Rourke declared, “Hell yes, we’re going to take your AR-15, your AK-47.”
The gun policy beef displayed on Tuesday’s debate stage had roots in swipes during a March For Our Lives gun forum in Las Vegas earlier this month.
“We have a way, sometimes as a party, in my party, of getting caught, just when we’ve amassed the discipline and the force to get something done right away, a shiny object makes it harder for us to focus,” Buttigieg said during the forum.
“Those who are worried about the polls and want to triangulate or talk to consultants and listen to the focus groups — and I’m thinking about Mayor Pete on this one, who I think probably wants to get to the right place, but is afraid of doing the right thing, right now,” O’Rourke told reporters.
Buttigieg hit back at O’Rourke in an interview released Monday. “I get it, he needs to pick a fight in order to stay relevant,” he said of O’Rourke’s attacks.
