When Beto O'Rourke first ran for public office in 2005, the incumbent city representative he was challenging accused O'Rourke of being arrested for burglary and DUI. The charges came up again when O'Rourke challenged U.S. Rep. Silvestre Reyes to represent El Paso in Congress.

O'Rourke has said that he "owned up" to those charges since his run for El Paso City Council. He described the burglary charge, which was later dropped, as his and some friends' "horsing around" at the University of Texas at El Paso.

"We snuck under the fence at the UTEP physical plant and set off an alarm," he told the El Paso Times in 2005. "We were arrested by UTEP police. ... UTEP decided not to press charges."

O'Rourke has acknowledged that the more serious charge came in 1998, when the then-26-year-old was arrested on a drunk-driving charge. The charged was dismissed in 1999 after he completed a court-recommended DWI program.

In a 2012 TV ad, Reyes brought up those charges again, in addition to his challenger's early support for legalizing marijuana and discussion of using eminent domain for a Downtown El Paso redevelopment plan.

In 2018, during an interview with Ellen Degeneres, O'Rourke called it a "terrible mistake".

"There’s no explanation or justifying that," he said. "Since then, I have gone on with friends to start a business, with (his wife) Amy to raise a family, serving my community in the United States Congress."

O'Rourke also acknowledged that if he were a member of ethnic minority group, the outcome for him might have been different.

"I know that if I were African American, if I had been arrested with marijuana, it might be very hard for me to then get a job," he said. "I’d have to check a box on an application form; I couldn’t finance my student loans. That might very well narrow my choices and options in life."

New allegations surface about Beto DUI

During O'Rourke's 2018 Senate campaign, the Houston Chronicle and others reported on the police report from the 1998 arrest. Witnesses said O'Rourke was traveling at a "high rate of speed" and had hit a truck and then crossed a median into the oncoming lanes.

The report also says that O'Rourke and a passenger tried to flee the scene.

Speaking at the Texas Tribune Festival in Austin during the Senate race, O’Rourke denied trying to flee, contradicting the police report filed at the time.

“I did not flee,” he told Texas Tribune CEO Evan Smith. “The police report on this count is wrong."

“I reached out to the passenger who was in the car that I was driving — who also does not appear in the police report, among other factual errors — somebody that I’ve not spoken to in more than 15 years, and asked her recollection of that evening. She said, ‘No, we were in the median of the road. We did not try to flee. I don’t know that there was anywhere we could have gone.’”

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