Beto O’Rourke storms Midwest as he mulls 2020 presidential run

Potential 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Beto O'Rourke stops by an overflow room to thank University of Wisconsin-Madison students who came to hear him speak at an event that attracted more than 200 people on Friday, Feb. 15, 2019, in Madison. less Potential 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Beto O'Rourke stops by an overflow room to thank University of Wisconsin-Madison students who came to hear him speak at an event that attracted more than 200 ... more Photo: Scott Bauer, Associated Press Photo: Scott Bauer, Associated Press Image 1 of / 29 Caption Close Beto O’Rourke storms Midwest as he mulls 2020 presidential run 1 / 29 Back to Gallery

Democrat Beto O’Rourke, who said he will decide whether to run for president by the end of the month, spent the weekend in the Midwest.

O’Rourke, a former El Paso congressman, visited the University of Wisconson-Madison on Friday before heading to Chicago for the United States Hispanic Leadership Institute’s national conference on Saturday.

O’Rourke, who raised $80 million in his campaign against Texas Sen. Ted Cruz in the fall and lost by less than 3 percentage points, has been considering whether to run for president in 2020 for nearly three months.

Wisconsin — traditionally blue but carried by President Donald Trump in 2016 — has become a top priority for Democrats ahead of the 2020 race.

“I want to make sure that I'm listening to everyone — not just those that I know in El Paso and in Texas, but everyone, including going to places that are forgotten or overlooked or have not been visited enough or are only thought about in calculations as you accumulate electoral votes or you think about the next election,” he said Friday in Madison.

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The next day, O’Rourke told the U.S. Hispanic Leadership Institute conference that Trump’s efforts to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border must be challenged.

“This president has declared a national emergency and he’s using it as the excuse to build a wall, to spend your money on a barrier between the United States and Mexico at a time that more Mexican nationals are going south from this country than are coming north,” O’Rourke said Saturday in Chicago.

At the conference, O’Rourke recounted the Feb. 11 protest of Trump’s visit to El Paso. Trump was pressing for funding for the border wall, and also took several shots at O’Rourke during his ‘Finish the wall’ rally. Trump described O’Rourke as “a young man who’s got very little going for himself.”

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More than 10,000 people showed up at the counter rally, O’Rourke told the crowd in Chicago: “not against a man or even his policies, but in an effort to show who we are at our best — this beautiful, safe city, one of the safest in the United States of America, not because of walls but in spite of walls.”

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