Beto O'Rourke, the former congressman from El Paso, is expected to formally announce on Thursday that he is running for president in 2020, KTSM reports.
O'Rourke shared the news with KTSM, a television station in El Paso, via text on Wednesday afternoon. The Democrat rose to national prominence last year during his run for Senate against Republican Ted Cruz, a race he narrowly lost.
In an interview with Vanity Fair published Wednesday, O'Rourke said it was pretty clear that he did want to run, and he'd "be good at it." While it's "important to defeat Trump," he told the magazine, "that's not exciting to me. What's exciting to me is for the United States to lead the world, in making sure that the generations that follow us can live here."
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When asked if he is a progressive, O'Rourke was careful in his answer. "I leave that to other people," he said. "I'm not into the labels. My sense in traveling Texas for the past two years, my sense is that people really aren't into them, either." Read the entire Vanity Fair interview to learn about O'Rourke's relationship with his late father, a DUI arrest, his family's opinion on a presidential run, and more.
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