Almost overnight, Beto O’Rourke has been propelled from being an also-ran presidential candidate languishing in the low single digits into a man who finds himself at the center of a national tragedy.
With 22 people, many of them Hispanic, shot dead by a white nationalist in his home town and his Democratic rivals all weighing in on gun control and domestic terrorism, the former Texas congressman made sure to seize his share of the limelight.
After a vigil on Sunday, O’Rourke, who choked back tears before flying back to the border town, expressed exasperation at being asked if there is anything that President Trump could do to make the situation better.
“What do you think? You know the s–t he’s been saying. He’s been calling Mexican immigrants rapists and criminals. Like, members of the press, what the f–k?” O’Rourke said. The clip quickly went viral.
On Monday, he said: “The only modern Western democracy that I can think of that said anything close to this is the Third Reich, Nazi Germany.”
Every campaign apparatchik appreciates Albert Einstein’s dictum that in every crisis lies great opportunity. While politicians will always be wary of being seen to exploit a tragedy, all know that times of great national calamity can transform their fortunes, such as President Bill Clinton after the Oklahoma bombing in 1995, or President George W. Bush grabbing the bullhorn at Ground Zero after 9/11.
At the very least, O’Rourke has the chance to establish himself as a more serious figure than the self-obsessed, angst-ridden 46-year-old man-child his opponents, with some success, have painted him as. After beginning his presidential campaign in the warm afterglow of a narrow Senate loss in Texas, he slipped from 9.5% support at the beginning of April to about 3% now, according to RealClearPolitics.
As a former House member for the El Paso area, O’Rourke has no official role in contacting federal agencies or otherwise helping the crime scene’s aftermath. At most he can bring a sense of moral authority to El Paso, which he regularly hails as one of America’s safest cities.
O’Rourke’s campaign has been quick to push his post-shooting comments. A Twitter account in the name of O’Rourke’s family dog Artemis, a black Lab, tweeted Monday about the candidate’s f-word moment. “I’ve never been prouder! My dad does not hold back, he’s speaking with the frustration of millions of voices, he is our voice.”
In response to a story noting that O’Rourke broke his pledge to not swear on the campaign trail, his campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon tweeted, without the dashes, “Are you f—ing kidding me??”
But O’Rourke is walking a tightrope. If he is seen to be using the tragedy as a campaign backdrop, his 2020 bid will likely be doomed.
Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel accused O’Rourke of trying to capitalize on the shooting. “A tragedy like this is not an opportunity to reboot your failing presidential campaign,” McDaniel tweeted Sunday in response to a clip of O’Rourke calling Trump a white nationalist. “This is disgusting and wrong.” A New York Post opinion headline on Sunday declared, “Beto exploits tragedy for sake of politics.”
Others, though, praised O’Rourke for his emotional assertions.“This kind of moral clarity is why Texas fell in love with Beto,” musician Mikel Jollett tweeted in response to a clip of O’Rourke comparing Trump’s rhetoric to Nazi Germany.
“Beto is looking better and better as a candidate. His Honest expression of frustration. His clear eyed analysis of what is happening. That Impressed us,” MSNBC host Mika Brzezinski said on Monday.
The challenge for O’Rourke is to extend his appeal beyond not only West Coast musicians and East Coast cable anchors but further afield than Texas, into the Midwestern heartlands.
But with his campaign burning through money and after no discernible bounce from debates in Miami and Detroit, O’Rourke’s backers believe that his response to the horror of what happened in El Paso could give more Americans the chance to judge him afresh.
