Houston Chronicle by Kevin Diaz 10/12/2018
Politically progressive, photogenic, and hip, El Paso Congressman Beto O’Rourke has electrified Democrats with a cool factor that fuels his underdog quest in Texas to take down conservative Republican icon Sen. Ted Cruz.
Running for the U.S. Senate simply as “Beto,†O’Rourke has sought the reformist high-ground with a “people powered†campaign rejecting special interest and corporate PAC money, notwithstanding his roots in a wealthy, politically-connected family that has not been immune to scandal.
A former city council member and three-term member of Congress, O’Rourke’s early life and career has only recently come under increased public scrutiny, partly through Republican attacks focused on his family ties.
On the city council, he was accused of conflicts of interest in 2006 for pushing an urban renewal plan involving his wealthy father-in-law, a multi-national real estate investor once described as “the richest man in El Paso.â€
As a member of Congress, and an investor with an extensive portfolio, he was criticized for taking part in initial public stock offerings in Twitter and several other businesses, an ethics violation that he quickly remedied when it was brought to his attention.
Along the way his mother, who was his partner in several business ventures, ran a family furniture store that was targeted by the IRS in a $630,000 tax fraud case in 2010.
None of those controversies hurt his progression from Columbia University in New York, then bass player in an underground punk band, then tech entrepreneur in El Paso, and finally a city council member and congressman. But until recently his early life had hardly registered a blip on the nation’s political radar.
Now amid the hottest Senate race in the country, the picture that emerges is more complicated than O’Rourke’s image as fresh-faced political outsider taking on Washington’s entrenched political interests with nothing but enthusiasm, audacity, and small-dollar donations.
The scion of one of El Paso’s foremost families, O’Rourke came of age surrounded by business and civic leaders who saw it as their mission to advance their city into a cultural and commercial hub - the jewel of the American Southwest.
A fourth-generation Texan, O’Rourke is the son of a politically active businessman who worked with former Democratic Gov. Mark White. Patrick O’Rourke, who was killed in a bicycle accident in 2001, once ran for Congress -- as a Republican.
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