Houston has loomed large in Beto O’Rourke’s improbable emergence from El Paso Congressman to top tier Democratic challenger for the White House. It was the site of the most viral moment of his 2018 U.S. Senate campaign and the place where he found his answer to criticism over his 1998 DWI arrest. Houston shaped his views on major public policy issues like climate change and criminal justice. And O’Rourke makes references to Houston and Harris County at nearly every stop as he ping-pongs through early presidential primary states like Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. Given all that, it was no surprise that O’Rourke, 46, decided to make Houston a part of his 3-city Texas launch of his presidential campaign on Saturday. Hours after holding a massive street party in El Paso formally kicking off his campaign with his family by his side, O’Rourke flew to Houston to pay homage to Texas’s biggest city and an area that turned out to vote in massive numbers in his U.S. Senate campaign for him. Later he was expected to finish in Austin. Texas Take: Get political headlines from across the state sent directly to your inbox “Huge honor for us to be back here with you in this community that means so much to us personally,” O’Rourke told thousands of people in front of the Martin Luther King Jr. Humanities Center at Texas Southern University. O’Rourke told the crowd that he has found answers to some of the state and nation’s biggest problems through Houston and its examples of diversity. “There’s nothing wrong with this country right now, that we cannot make right with this country right now,” he said to a roar of the audience. “And it’s going to be the people of Texas. It’s going to be the people of Houston, Texas who lead the way.” In an broad, aspirational speech, O’Rourke said as president he’d push for universal health care, pre-kindergarten for all students, better teacher pay, ending the prohibition on marijuana, improving voting rights laws to make it easier for people to register to vote and cast ballots. “At this very divided, highly-polarized, hyper-partisan moment, what this country needs is for us to come together,” he said. O’Rourke is among more than a dozen Democrats who have announced they are running for president in 2020. O’Rourke is one of the few in the race that has never won a statewide office, though he set new fundraising records by raising more than $80 million in his loss to U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz in November. For subscribers: In Iowa, Beto O’Rourke is embarrassed yet electric, shamed but still upbeat While no Texas Democrats has been a serious contender for the White House since 1976, O’Rourke has leaned heavily on his ability to help turn Texas into a more competitive state in 2018 as evidence that he can reach voters that many Democrats have not been able to connect with. That was on display in much of the last two weeks as O’Rouke began campaigning in parts of Iowa that are often overlooked in presidential races. In those stops, O’Rourke frequently turned to Houston to help explain his positions and views on key issues. Houston was also a big part of the first 15 minutes of his presidential campaign in Keokuk, Iowa, where he warned that if climate change is not addressed, more cities will be hit by storms like Hurricane Harvey and make people rethink how livable their neighborhoods have become. A day later, at a stop in Cedar Rapids, he was warning about not taking any voters for granted, talking up his frequent trips to Kashmere Gardens in Houston where he reached out to solid Democratic voters who, he said, are sometimes taken for granted by a party that considers them automatic supporters. When asked about gun control later, he talked about gun activists he met in Houston and students at Sante Fe High School. In Charleston, South Carolina, he touted the victories of 17 women of color who swept judicial offices in Harris County last year as evidence of the nation embracing diversity. Those women were a key part of his speech on Saturday at Texas Southern University, where many sat in the front row as O’Rourke lauded them for “literally changing the face of criminal justice.” When asked about all his shout-outs to Bayou City, O’Rourke says Houston is a model of what happens when a community truly embraces its diversity. “I love doing my best to help tell the story of Houston to the rest of the country, that’s why I keep bringing it up,” O’Rourke said in rural northeast Iowa. O’Rourke said the city is an example of how diversity benefits a community and is not something to be feared. The role Houston has played in his political emergence was hard to miss in 2018. While O’Rourke’s U.S. Senate campaign in 2018 was already shaking up the Texas political establishment for months, it was a moment in Houston in early August that propelled him from a Lone Star State peculiarity to a national figure. During a campaign stop at The Villagio, a wedding venue in West Houston, cameras were rolling when a man asked O’Rourke if he had a problem with NFL players kneeling during the playing of the National Anthem. O’Rourke answered with an impromptu four-minute speech in which he said he had no issue with NFL players participating in non-violent protest to draw attention to racial disparities in criminal justice. His answer, which highlighted key moments of the Civil Rights Movement, become a viral sensation. After more than 44 million people watched the clip online, national talk show host Ellen DeGeneres brought O’Rourke on her show where tens of millions of more people saw the clip that helped turn O’Rourke into a national figure. “And so nonviolently, peacefully, while the eyes of this country are watching these games, they take a knee to bring our attention and our focus to this problem to ensure that we fix it,” O’Rourke said in the clip. “That is why they are doing it. And I can think of nothing more American than to peacefully stand up, or take a knee, for your rights, anytime, anywhere, in any place.” Bayou City key to criminal justice platform That moment has followed O’Rourke on the presidential trail. In Cedar Rapids, it became an early part of the discussion on a popular podcast where the hosts recounted the moment as a critical part of his Senate campaign, as O’Rourke came within three percentage points of upsetting U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz. In that same month, O’Rourke was again in Houston when he found himself tackling his own past of having twice been arrested, including for driving while under the influence of alcohol twenty years ago. He said it was touring the Harris County jail with Sheriff Ed Gonzalez that he understood even more about the disparities in the criminal justice system for people who are white versus those who are black. He said when he was arrested for criminal trespassing 24 years ago, he was able to make bail and not have it haunt him, even after he was arrested for DWI three years later. He said it’s clear there are many Texans who can’t afford the bail and their transgressions - though very similar - result in years of legal and financial problems that upend their lives . O’Rourke is from a politically connected family where his late-father was once the elected El Paso County Judge. “The chance that I had, and which I have made the most of, is denied to too many of our fellow Texans, particularly those who don’t look like me or have access to the same opportunities that I did,” O’Rourke wrote in an opinion piece he sent to the Houston Chronicle the same day he met with Gonzalez and other criminal justice advocates. O’Rourke has been even more blunt on the presidential trail: “A lot of it has to do with the fact that I’m a white man.” O’Rourke’s 1998 DWI continues to come up on the campaign trail .<doc-sep>EL PASO, Texas — Former Texas Congressman Beto O’Rourke formally launched his presidential campaign in his hometown Saturday morning, casting himself as a figure who can unite Americans of all political persuasions and vowing to build the largest grassroots campaign in American history. “Whatever our differences, where you live, who you love, to whom you pray, for whom you voted in the last election, let those differences not define us or divide us at this moment,” O’Rourke told the crowd here. “Let's agree, going forward, before we are anything else, we are Americans first.” O’Rourke’s first of three planned Texas rallies Saturday took place blocks away from the U.S.-Mexico border, less than a half mile from the downtown El Paso street where he took the stage. Several thousand supporters greeted O’Rourke in El Paso, and more are expected when he travels to two larger Democratic strongholds, Texas Southern University in Houston this afternoon and in downtown Austin in the evening. O’Rourke leaned heavily on how this bi-national community he grew up in has shaped him — from his years as a local city council member and his surprising win against an incumbent member more than six years ago to his time serving as the local member of the House focusing on veterans issues, immigration issues, and beyond. “It was really important for Amy and me to launch this campaign from El Paso. This is a city where I was born," O’Rourke said, adding that he was raised and is raising his family here. "Perhaps, most importantly, El Paso, to me, represents America at its very best. For more than 100 years, this community has welcomed generations of immigrants from across the Rio Grande.” In an environment when immigration and the idea of a border wall have become a major flash point across American politics, O’Rourke has attempted to differentiate himself from the rest of the Democratic field by heavily identifying himself as a person from the border. Immigration was a seminal issue for O’Rourke in both his 2018 Senate campaign, and early in the presidential primary. Democratic 2020 U.S. presidential candidate Beto O'Rourke walks of the stage during a kickoff rally on the streets of El Paso, Texas, on March 30, 2019. Lucas Jackson / Reuters “We are safe not despite the fact that we are a city of immigrants and asylum seekers; we are safe because we are a city of immigrants and asylum seekers," O'Rourke said. "We have learned not to fear our differences, but to respect and embrace them. We see the language is spoken in this community. The traditions, the cultures as a strength for El Paso. We understand that we are, in the words of Dr. King, caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny." In an afternoon appearance at Texas Southern University in Houston and late Saturday night surrounded by a crowd of thousands in the shadow of the state Capitol in Austin, O’Rourke hit many of the same themes that have driven his campaign thus far. “Let’s end cash bail, let’s end for-profit prisons, and let’s end the war on drugs which has become a war on people,” O’Rourke said to cheers on stage in Austin. O’Rourke’s campaign rollout began two weeks ago in Keokuk, Iowa, and immediately launched into events across the Midwest, as well as in the early primary states of New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada. In his campaign’s first 24 hours, O’Rourke reported raising $6.1 million dollars — setting the pace for the Democratic field. His average donation was $48. The campaign’s first weeks have shown both the promise and potential for this unorthodox candidate. His events at coffee shops and breweries have been packed with supportive or curious would-be voters, and his hiring this week of Jen O’Malley Dillion to manage his campaign signaled a desire to professionalize his skeletal operation. But O’Rourke faces a wide swath of new challenges in a Democratic presidential primary that he didn’t face in his much-publicized Senate race last year against Republican Ted Cruz. He enters a very crowded field with other Democratic stars from across the country in a year when hunger is high among many Democrats for a ticket including gender and racial diversity. Fellow Texan and rival Democratic presidential candidate Julián Castro launched his campaign from San Antonio in January and has also focused on border issues. O’Rourke’s focus on his border community resonated with Giselle Rodriguez of El Paso, who attended the rally and thinks O’Rourke “is ready to be president, especially because he has personal experience in El Paso and because very involved in the border,” she said. “It’s a safe place ... I cross to Juarez whenever I want. I never have an issue. I never see a problem.”<doc-sep>His words and the setting on the street that connects El Paso with Ciudad Juárez symbolized what his campaign said would be one of Mr. O’Rourke’s themes — a “unifying vision for bridging divides” to unite Americans from all walks of life. But the speech by Mr. O’Rourke, a former three-term member of Congress, comes at a time of extraordinary discord over immigration, with a surge of migrants trying to enter the United States and President Trump threatening to seal off the border next week. El Paso has been a flash point for much of that unrest, with hundreds of migrants now being held in a makeshift encampment under a bridge near where Mr. O’Rourke was speaking. The encampment, where immigration officials are detaining people behind razor wire with little hot food, was set up last week when El Paso’s main border processing center reached overflow capacity following the largest influx of migrants in years. Acknowledging the plight of the migrants, Mr. O’Rourke said, “Let us remember that every single one of us, including those who are just three or four blocks from here detained under the international bridge — behind chain-link fence and barbed wire — they are our fellow human beings and deserve to be treated like our fellow human beings.” Mr. O’Rourke, who also held rallies Saturday in Houston and outside the state’s capitol in Austin, stressed not only immigration but also health care, education, climate change, criminal justice reform, the economy, voting rights and racial inequality. All are topics that have emerged as major issues in the effort by Democrats to unseat Mr. Trump in 2020.<doc-sep>
Dana Bash: This is so telling about where the Republican party is NEW YORK, NY - AUGUST 24: Trump Tower stands on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan on August 24, 2018 in New York City. Following new allegations over hush money that former Trump attorney Michael Cohen paid to an adult-film actress, the Manhattan district attorneyÕs office in New York City may seek criminal charges against the Trump Organization in the coming days. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images) Why GOP is standing in the way of Capitol riot investigation WASHINGTON - NOVEMBER 08: US Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner (R-VA) remarks on the resignation of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld at the US Capitol November 8, 2006 in Washington, DC. Warner said he supports President George W. Bush's nomination of former CIA Director Robert Gates for Secretary of Defense. Warner said he anticipates Gates' confirmation before the end of the year. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images) Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), joined by Senate Assistant Minority Leader John Thune (R-SD) (L) and Senate Minority Whip Roy Blunt (R-MO), speaks following a Senate Republican Policy luncheon at the Russell Senate Office Building on May 18, 2021 in Washington, DC. Democratic presidential candidate Beto O'Rourke stands on a counter top as he talks with voters during his second day of campaigning for the 2020 nomination at Central Park Coffee Company March 15, 2019 in Mount Pleasant, Iowa. After losing a long-shot race for U.S. Senate to Ted Cruz (R-TX), the 46-year-old O'Rourke is making his first campaign swing through Iowa after jumping into a crowded Democratic field this week. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images) (CNN) — Blocks from the Mexican border, Beto O’Rourke on Saturday cast the United States as being on the brink of becoming a “democracy in name only” and his hometown as an example of the nation’s way forward. “This extraordinary, unprecedented concentration of wealth and power and privilege must be broken apart, and opportunity must be shared with all,” he said Saturday morning in the first large rally of his presidential campaign. Speaking Spanish, he said he would fight for a country in which gender, ethnicity and a family’s time in the United States are not barriers to voting and economic participation. The former Texas congressman launched his bid for the 2020 Democratic nomination two weeks ago. Back in his home state after a tour of the early-voting states and the upper Midwest, O’Rourke held his first large public rallies Saturday – starting in El Paso, where police said a crowd of 1,000 to 2,000 had gathered, with thousands more expected in Houston and Austin later in the day. Saturday’s first event was billed by his campaign as its official kickoff, with more than 1,000 launch parties planned across the country. Its staging, at an intersection dotted by local businesses on El Paso Street, was designed to play up O’Rourke’s status as the only candidate in the 2020 Democratic field who hails from a border city. In her introduction, Democratic Rep. Veronica Escobar – who holds O’Rourke’s former seat in Congress – called El Paso “the capital of the border; the new Ellis Island.” O’Rourke’s wife Amy described him on their first date as “trying to change my life’s course and get me to give El Paso a shot.” O’Rourke, who drew thousands to a march and rally to counter President Donald Trump’s visit to El Paso earlier this year, argued that the city’s success undercuts Trump’s rhetoric. “We are safe because we are a city of immigrants and asylum-seekers. We have learned not to fear our differences, but to respect and embrace them,” O’Rourke said. “We see the languages spoken in this community – the traditions and cultures – as a strength for El Paso.” O’Rourke pointed to the international bridge between El Paso and Ciudad Juárez just blocks down the street, where he had this week visited asylum-seekers being detained there. “They are our fellow human beings and deserve to be treated like our fellow human beings,” he said. Until now, O’Rourke had stuck to smaller events in coffee shops, bars and college quads – spending most of his time fielding questions from his audiences. On Saturday, transitioning between English and Spanish, he laid out his own vision. He cast the United States as driven by “gross differences in opportunity and outcome” in education, economic advancement and criminal justice.