From an emphatic no to an enthusiastic yes: How Beto O'Rourke decided to run for president

[applegrove]

From an emphatic no to an enthusiastic yes: How Beto O’Rourke decided to run for president


Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke meets Iowa Latino voters over dinner in Muscatine, Iowa, on Thursday. (Melina Mara/The Washington Post)

By Matt Viser Washington Post

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/from-an-emphatic-no-to-an-enthusiastic-yes-how-beto-orourke-decided-to-run-for-president/2019/03/17/9720a82c-4755-11e9-aaf8-4512a6fe3439_story.html?utm_term=.422d3b99f92d

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Interviews with some of those closest to him provide a window into a decision-making process that was organic and haphazard, one that involved a coterie of informal advisers and longtime friends and allowed thoughts to simmer before making a gut-level call. It is a process that informs how he will run his freewheeling and by-the-moment presidential campaign, as well as how his White House would operate if he were to get that far.

In the first days of his campaign he has outlined the issues motivating him — combating climate change, fixing the country’s immigration issues, and healing its racial divides — but he concedes he doesn’t have some of the specifics and says he will lean on “people far smarter than me.” Unlike candidates such as Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, who launched their campaigns with clearly articulated policy platforms, O’Rourke focuses more on sweeping calls for unity and pitching himself as the best antidote to the country’s toxic politics.

Beto O’Rourke adjusts his new Iowa hat before meeting voters at the Sing-A-Long Bar and Grill in Mount Vernon, Iowa, on Friday. (Melina Mara/The Washington Post)

“We want to be for everybody, work with everybody,” he said. “Could care less about your party affiliation or any other difference that might otherwise divide us at this moment of truth, where I really feel we will either make or break this great country and our democracy.”


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