Former Texas congressman Beto O’Rourke says he has made a decision about whether to seek the Democratic nomination for president and will announce his plans soon.
“Amy and I have made a decision about how we can best serve our country,” the former Texas congressman said in a prepared statement about his deliberations with his wife. “We are excited to share it with everyone soon.”
People close to O’Rourke, 46, told the Dallas Morning News they expected he would add his name to the growing field of Democrats seeking to challenge Republican President Trump in 2020.
Confidants also said he will not run against incumbent Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX).
Cornyn told reporters in Fort Worth that O’Rourke’s Senate bid against Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) last year was “closer than many people would have thought.”
Cruz won that race with just over 200,000 more votes than O’Rourke.
“He captured people’s imaginations and came very close to winning,” Cornyn said. “It only makes sense that candidates running in 2020 learn from that.”
Today, an online campaign formed to draft O’Rourke into the presidential race invited supporters to sign up for alerts in anticipation of O’Rourke’s looming announcement.
“We’re anticipating a bit of pandemonium when Beto announces, but in a good way,” Draft Beto co-founder Nate Lerner said in a prepared statement. “We want to organize that energy and point it in the right direction.”
O’Rourke has previously said he will decide by the end of February if he would launch a White House campaign, and speculation around his plans mounted this month after several high-profile public appearances.
He sat for an interview with Oprah Winfrey in New York and held a rival rally to decry Trump’s immigration policy as the president promoted his planned border wall in El Paso. He also visited the general election battleground state of Wisconsin.
But with former Vice President Joe Biden already hiring operatives in key states like Iowa and South Carolina, O’Rourke’s timeline has narrowed.
O’Rourke would enter a dense Democratic primary field that already includes Sen. Bernie Sanders, Sen. Cory Booker, Sec. Julian Castro, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Sen. Amy Klobuchar, and Sen. Kamala Harris.