Beto O’Rourke is back behind the wheel of a rented minivan in Iowa. And political pros — including some of his own advisers — are cringing.
In presidential politics, candidates almost never drive themselves to events, and for good reason: Car rides are an opportunity to nap, make phone calls, return emails or read briefing materials.
O’Rourke, however, operates differently.
He became a Democratic sensation after visiting every one of Texas’ 254 counties in his closer-than-expected Texas Senate race last year, often pulling up to events behind the wheel.
He stayed in the driver’s seat for his highly publicized, unaccompanied road-trip through the American Southwest in January while mulling a run for president.
And there he has remained in the earliest days of his campaign.
“It’s icy and the cops are out — Jesus,” said former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, who tried persuading O’Rourke to hire a driver, as most candidates do, when the two met for lunch shortly before O’Rourke announced his presidential campaign.
“If the candidate hits someone and hurts someone — campaign over,” added Ed Rendell, a former governor of Pennsylvania and former Democratic National Committee chairman. “If the candidate drives and wrecks a car, campaign teetering on the brink.”
Beto O’Rourke likes to do the driving in his campaign.
On most presidential campaigns, allowing a candidate to routinely drive would be considered operational malpractice — one misstep short of a catastrophe or, more likely, a colossal waste of time.
Running for president is exhausting, distances between events are long and candidates have more productive things they could be doing instead.
Even some of O’Rourke’s advisers have quietly suggested that he cut down on driving himself, but to no avail.
Following a flight to Des Moines, a drive to Ames, a rally at Iowa State University, a question-and-answer session with reporters, a photo line and another round of media interviews, O’Rourke late Wednesday stepped into a waiting Dodge Grand Caravan and drove off.
It was still raining the next morning when O’Rourke tweeted he was “on the road and excited to see you” at events in Carroll, Denison and Sioux City.
The publicity O’Rourke has commanded for driving has proved effective in an O’Rourke-isn’t-too-good-to-drive-himself kind of way.
He told Radio Iowa this month — in an interview conducted while O’Rourke was driving — that driving is “just a way for me to fully engage.”
“I don’t like being on my phone, being distracted looking at emails or texts,” O’Rourke told the radio station. “I want to be seeing the beautiful country through which we’re driving, seeing that community as we pull in, really taking in Main Street and I love being behind the wheel. I love driving. I love road trips.”
As O’Rourke arrives at events in new cities, photographers gape at O’Rourke disembarking from the driver’s seat, or they rush to re-position themselves after realizing he is not emerging from the passenger side.
With a non-driving aide holding the camera, O’Rourke sometimes appears while driving on Facebook Live.
But there have already been signs of how taxing the exercise can be.
Earlier this month, O’Rourke was more than an hour late to his first event in New Hampshire after driving all day from Pennsylvania.
“We are trying to responsibly get there as quickly as we can,” he told viewers on his livestream from the car. “We started this drive in Central Pennsylvania eight-plus hours ago, and we’ve really been on the road ever since.”
When an aide said that the drive did not initially appear likely to take so long, O’Rourke replied, “You’ve got to factor in some bathroom breaks, some picking up a sandwich … getting slightly lost when I was looking for the gas station in Massachusetts.”
For O’Rourke, it is not a stunt.
He does not, by numerous accounts, turn the wheel over to an aide once he is out of public view.
And despite being offered a beer at several campaign events, O’Rourke — who has apologized repeatedly for a past arrest for DUI — has religiously turned such offers down.
Even so, Chris Lippincott, an Austin-based consultant who ran a super PAC opposing Sen. Ted Cruz in the Senate race, said, “We know how dangerous it is to drive when you are distracted. The statistics are clear on that. I can’t imagine a bigger distraction than someone running for president.”