That didn’t take long.
Defeated Democratic Senate candidate Beto O’Rourke hinted Friday that he hasn’t ruled out running for president in 2020.
“It’s been a little bit more than a week since we lost this election and ran this race, and I’m still taking that in and trying to figure out just where I am and where my family is, so, no, we haven’t really been able to talk,” O’Rourke started to say during a brief run-in with a TMZ photographer.
The photographer interjected, “So it sounds like you might be open to it, possibly?”
“You know,” O’Rourke responded, “I haven’t made any decisions about anything is probably the best way for me to put it. I think everything’s too fresh still for me.”
This is a bit of a shift away from what O’Rourke regularly told reporters and supporters on the campaign trail when he ran to unseat Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas. Back then, the Texas Democrat said repeatedly that he was not interested in a presidential bid. He was emphatic about it.
“It’s a definitive no,” he said on Oct. 18 in response to being asked about whether he had any 2020 aspirations. “The answer is no. Our children are 11, they’re 10, and they’re 7 years old. We’ve told them we’re going to take these almost two years out of our life to run this race, and then we’re devoted and committed to being a family again.”
“If I don’t win,” he added, “we’re back in El Paso.”
Later, on Nov. 5, O’Rourke told MSNBC’s Garrett Haake, “I will not be a candidate for president. That’s I think as definitive as those sentences get.”
But now that the 2018 midterm elections have come and gone, he seems to be singing a slightly different tune. He is about as shameless as Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., who has also flip-flopped on her 2020 midterm promise. Like O’Rourke, she claimed on Oct. 25 that she would put in all six years should she win re-election, saying unequivocally, “I will serve my six-year term.” But now that the 2018 midterm elections have come and gone, she’s saying she’s giving a “hard thought of consideration” to running in 2020, telling anyone who will listen that she’s “thinking about it.”
As Politico’s Burgess Everett says, “There’s the pre-midterm truth and then the post-midterm truth.”
