SEARCHING FOR the real Beto O’Rourke. For starters, his name is Robert. . . .
Although he said both before and after losing the Senate race in Texas to Ted Cruz that he had no plan to run for office in 2020, Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke recently left the door wide open. And now he has met with Obama at his home in Washington. In that context, I sent a list of questions to his press spokeswoman, but never received an answer.
The first question dealt with whether O’Rourke has any Hispanic heritage, or whether, as he is in truth, fourth-generation Irish. As a child living in El Paso, O’Rourke was given the nickname “Beto,” which is a common Hispanic moniker for Roberto, in order to delineate between him and his maternal grandfather, Robert Williams. When O’Rourke attended Columbia in New York he used “Rob,” but his father, then El Paso County Judge Pat O’Rourke, suggested that he once again use “Beto” to increase his chance of winning political office in the heavily Hispanic city of El Paso, which Robert readily agreed to do.
He graduated from Columbia in 1995, and later that month was arrested for burglary at UTEP (the University of Texas El Paso) along with two others. He has previously explained it as a prank from his college years. I asked his spokeswoman if it was true he had already graduated from Columbia and never attended UTEP; what the purpose of the burglary was; what his relationship with Jose Prieto, Jr. and Jacob Barowsky whom he was arrested with was, and where they were located today. I received no response.
Concerning O’Rourke’s 1998 DWI, I asked his spokeswoman why he never admitted the incident also involved a hit and run until the press obtained the arrest reports last August. O’Rourke now claims it was not a hit and run, but I asked the spokeswoman if the arresting officer and a witness who reportedly chased him were lying after O’Rourke, going at an excessive rate of speed, struck a truck on I-10 west of El Paso and ended up on the other side of the Interstate, and then fled. Again no response.
Well, they do call him “Kennedyesque.”