O’Rourke begins securing House endorsements, including Rep. Escobar
Democrat Beto O’Rourke is starting to win endorsements from former House colleagues as he begins his presidential campaign.
Endorsing O’Rourke hours after he entered the race and headed to Iowa for the first time was Florida Rep. Stephanie Murphy, whose swing district includes downtown Orlando.
O’Rourke also picked up the endorsement of Rep. Kathleen Rice, who went with the Texan over a fellow New Yorker and presidential hopeful Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand.
Texas Rep. Veronica Escobar also endorsed him. Escobar won O’Rourke’s safely Democratic seat in El Paso when he left Congress to run for Senate last year. O’Rourke spent three terms in the House before losing narrowly to Republican Sen. Ted Cruz in November.
Meantime, President Donald Trump is welcoming O’Rourke to the Democratic primary race with faint praise. Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office Thursday, Trump says of the Texas congressman: “Well, I think he’s got a lot of hand movement.” Then he added: “Is he crazy or is that just how he acts?”
For his part, Trump said he was ready for anyone. Asked if he was more threatened by O’Rourke or former Vice President Joe Biden, Trump said: “whoever it is I’ll take him or her on.”
The former Texas congressman announced his White House run Thursday morning and stopped later in a coffeeshop in Keokuk, Iowa. He promised to offer the kind of bipartisan, optimistic vision for the future that helped him nearly upset Republican Sen. Ted Cruz in deeply red Texas last November. O’Rourke told the Iowa crowd: “I could care less about your party persuasion, your religion, anything other than the fact that, right now, we are all Americans.”
