Presidential Candidate Beto O'Rourke Visits OKC Bombing Memorial

Monday, August 19th 2019, 9:25 am

By: Grant Hermes

Democratic presidential hopeful Former Rep. Beto O'Rourke (D-TX) will visit the Oklahoma City National Memorial and Museum Monday in the wake of recent racist violence and mass shootings.

O’Rourke, 46, is the first candidate in roughly a decade to make a deliberate campaign stop at the Memorial commemorating the Murrah Building Bombing.

In 2015, Sen. Marco Rubio was given a private tour. Candidates Trump, Clinton, Cruz, Bush and Sanders did not visit the memorial in an official capacity despite multiple visits to OKC in the last presidential campaign.

President Barack Obama did not visit the memorial during his two-terms, including skipping the 20th anniversary. President Bill Clinton attended the milestone anniversary in his place. President George W. Bush visited at the dedication of the museum in 2001.

O'Rourke's visit comes after the mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton. In El Paso, which is O'Rourke's hometown, the shooter was motivated by white nationalism mirroring the motivation behind the Murrah Building bombing.

The attack in 1995 remains the largest act of domestic terror in American history and is second only to 9/11 for acts of terror on U.S. soil.

O'Rourke visited the site of the 1921 Race Massacre on Black Wall Street In Tulsa Monday Morning after an event Sunday.

Read Related: Democratic Presidential Candidate Beto O'Rourke Campaigns In Tulsa

“In the face of that inaction in that racism that has always existed and flowed through the history of this country but now can do so in the open under this president,” O’Rourke told a crowd at a Tulsa brewery on Sunday.

In the latest polling data on the Democratic race in Oklahoma O'Rourke only had 1 percent of the Sooner Democratic primary vote.

He'll end his day on the University of Oklahoma campus on the first day of class. The event begins at 3:45 p.m.