Updated at 9:50 a.m. on Friday with Julian Castro's comments.

DES MOINES, Iowa — Beto O’Rourke’s decision to skip the Iowa State Fair — the fried Oreos, world famous butter cow, throngs of voters and horde of media eager to witness would-be presidents flipping pork chops and admiring prize-winning pigs — is actually going over pretty well with Iowans.

Along the midway, where O’Rourke was scheduled to arrive Friday morning for a turn on the political soapbox, the consensus was that he was doing the right thing by staying in El Paso, his hometown that's reeling from a massacre of 22 shoppers at a bustling Walmart.

Was he missing an opportunity to gain some traction in Iowa? Probably.

Was he doing the right thing anyway? Definitely.

Did politics drive his decision to give up a week on the campaign trail to attend memorials and help to comfort a city he represented for six years in Congress? Would everyone running for president take such a risk?

“That would tell a lot about their character,” said Des Moines Democrat Shari Giudicessi, 57, after dropping a corn kernel in the jar for one of O’Rourke’s rivals, Pete Buttigieg. “It’s the right thing to do. He should be home with his people.”

O’Rourke was stumping in Nevada last Saturday when news alerts hit of a rampage at a Walmart Supercenter. He rushed home, scrapping a visit to California and shredding days of planned appearances.

Voters and pundits judge politicians on how they cope with crises during the campaign, personal and political. It’s a window into their instincts, part of the imperfect process of vetting potential presidents, whose days are filled with problems no one could anticipate.

Politically, the El Paso mass shooting — and one that followed a day later in Dayton, Ohio — posed a challenge to all the candidates. The national conversation inevitably pivoted to gun violence and immigrant-bashing. As a favorite son, it was natural for O’Rourke to fly home. For rivals, going to El Paso in the aftermath might look more opportunistic than presidential.

"We thought about that, but I didn't want to go there just to go there. I'm not going to go there to campaign or to try and use that," Julian Castro, the other Texan seeking the party's nomination, told an Iowa voter who asked him Friday morning why he wasn't in El Paso, too. "I don't think what they need is more presidential candidates over there. What they need is us expressing our support" — and for Congress to pass "common sense gun legislation."

As for his rival from Texas, Castro said, "Congressman O'Rourke is from El Paso. So he's home. He should be there. I am not from there....He's done a wonderful, fantastic job of expressing what all of us feel."

On Thursday, O’Rourke crossed into Ciudad Juarez for the funeral of one of the eight Mexican victims.

In Des Moines, eight hours after gates opened on Day 1 of the 11-day Iowa fair — a venue that White House contenders ordinarily dare not skip — the number of corn kernels in the Texan’s jar didn’t even cover the bottom. Former Vice President Joe Biden held a commanding lead in the "cast your kernel" straw poll.

Except in Texas, where he nearly toppled Sen. Ted Cruz last fall and became a national treasure to Democrats, O’Rourke remains mired near the back of the pack of two dozen.

Still, Giudicessi, a district manager for Cracker Barrel, said that whatever traction O'Rourke might have gained by coming to Iowa this weekend as planned, he would come off callous by prioritizing his campaign just six days after the massacre.

"That's what people would think," she said.

Her mom agreed.

"He's where he belongs, with his people down there," said Beverly Hutchinson, 75, a retired deputy sheriff from Oskaloosa. "This day and age, we need more people to do the right thing."

1 / 4Beverly Hutchinson, 75, a retired deputy sheriff from Oskaloosa, and her daughter Shari Giudicessi, 57, a Des Moines retail manager, at the Iowa State Fair on Aug. 8, 2019. They agreed that Beto O'Rourke's place was in El Paso rather than Iowa in the week after a mass shooting in his hometown.(Todd J. Gillman / staff) 2 / 4In the early going, Beto O'Rourke was among the laggards in the traditional "cast your kernel" straw poll at the Iowa State Fair on Aug. 8, 2019.(Todd J. Gillman / staff) 3 / 4Former Vice President Joe Biden delivers a 20-minute campaign speech at the Des Moines Register Political Soapbox at the Iowa State Fair on Aug. 8, 2019, in Des Moines.(Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images) 4 / 4Former Vice President Joe Biden poses for selfies while stumping at the Iowa State Fair on Aug. 8, 2019, in Des Moines. 22 of the 23 politicians seeking the Democratic Party presidential nomination will be visiting the fair this week, six months ahead of the all-important Iowa caucuses.(Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images)

And in fact, O’Rourke’s decision has clear political advantages, even if that isn’t his motive.

The accused killer, a 21-year-old from Allen, drove 10 hours across the state because, according to authorities and a manifesto he posted online, he wanted to personally stem the “invasion” of immigrants crossing the Rio Grande.

O’Rourke has staked his campaign on a contrast with President Donald Trump’s alarmism about border security, migrants and refugees. This tragedy put a fresh spotlight on him, and he’s using the opening to land some punches while people might be paying attention.

“I hope it’s not just a strategy,” said Gail McKean, 61, a retired social worker from Des Moines who had dropped her corn kernel for Castro, a former housing secretary and San Antonio mayor.

She agreed that O’Rourke has gotten some benefit from the post-massacre spotlight but said he’s also missing a chance to make inroads with Iowans by skipping the fair.

“It’s a good place to be seen,” she said. “People don’t always get out to campaign events” but when candidates stop at the fair, voters are happy to take a break from the corn dogs. “You’re already here.”

O’Rourke promotes El Paso as one of the safest cities in America not despite its proximity to Mexico and its ethnic diversity, but because of it. The killer’s anti-immigrant motives were a direct challenge to that vision.

"You have a president who has repeatedly ... vilified Hispanic and Latino members of our communities and of this country, warned of invasions not once or twice, but repeatedly ... describes people as an infestation or animals who are coming here," O'Rourke told MSNBC's Rachel Maddow on Wednesday night. "He is giving license to people to act on that. He's making it permissible to say awful things and do terrible things."

Trump disputes such assertions, rejecting the idea that his rhetoric inspired this particular killer or in any way fuels anti-immigrant bias. But O'Rourke remains very much on his mind, and that probably hasn't hurt the Texan's political prospects, either.

Trump was so irritated at O'Rourke's allegations that his anti-immigrant rhetoric inspired Saturday's rampage that Tuesday night, he tweeted that the Texan should "be quiet!"

During a visit Wednesday to El Paso to comfort survivors and relatives of those killed, and to thank first responders and hospital workers, Trump was caught on video boasting about the relative size of his crowd at a campaign rally in El Paso in February.

He falsely claimed that O’Rourke had attracted just 400 or so people. In fact, O’Rourke’s counter-rally attracted thousands, compared with 6,500 at the president’s rally.

The presidential attention may earn O’Rourke a fresh look from Democrats, and he sure could use it. He’s already collected enough donations and scored well enough in polls to earn a spot at the third primary debate, next month in Houston.

But he’s far from the top tier.

“Who?” 21-year-old nursing student Taylor Hardy from Osceola said after dropping a corn kernel in Biden’s jar, “because I actually know who he is.”

O’Rourke’s name truly didn’t ring a bell but, when told that he’d decided to scrap his weekend of campaign events in Iowa to attend prayer vigils and meet with survivors and next of kin, she called it the right move for him -- as a person and a politician.

“He needs to be able to take care of things back home before he can go elsewhere,” she said.

“Definitely. Definitely,” said Lindsey Bakker, 43, a middle school computer teacher from Urbandale who also dropped his corn kernel in Biden’s jar. “It’s his own community and he needs to be in his own community.”

“I think Biden would be in Scranton if something like this happened there,” he said.

He likes O’Rourke — “He certainly gave Cruz a good run in Texas,” — and figures it wouldn’t look especially bad if he’d decided to resume campaigning on Friday at the fair.

“He’s been there all week,” he said. “But maybe wait a little longer.”

Much as some rivals might hope that O’Rourke uses the tragedy as a pretext to drop out, that isn’t happening.

“I will return to the campaign trail. I will pursue the nomination of our party to serve our country as President of the United States,” he told Maddow. “But right now I'm going to focus on my community, on our family, on those families who are grieving right now and on those families who have somebody who's not yet out of the woods.”