Beto O’Rourke’s reticence to engage publicly in the 2020 campaign could put him at a competitive disadvantage in Iowa. | Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images Elections ‘Not a whole lot of red lights’: Beto O’Rourke leaning toward 2020 run The former Texas congressman’s radio silence is becoming increasingly awkward.

Beto O’Rourke is leaning toward running for president, according to four people who have spoken with him or his advisers in recent days.

But for a presidential contender, his radio silence is becoming increasingly awkward.


In Iowa and New Hampshire — where Democrats are accustomed to being courted aggressively by presidential contenders — calls from Democratic Party organizers to O’Rourke’s advisers go unreturned. And a report in the Wall Street Journal on Monday that O’Rourke won’t make any decision before February and is preparing for a solo road trip — but avoiding early nominating states — bewildered even his supporters.

“I have no idea what that is, what that means, what the strategy is,” said Tyler Jones, a Democratic strategist in South Carolina working on a campaign to draft O’Rourke into the presidential race. “Beto’s always done things more unconventionally than other Democratic leaders, so I think it’s very much on brand … I’m sure he has a strategy, and just because we don’t know what it is doesn’t mean it’s not a good one.”

O’Rourke’s former chief of staff, David Wysong, has been speaking privately with Democratic strategists since November, but without any definitive suggestion of the former Texas congressman’s timing for a decision. O’Rourke himself spoke with former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley before O’Malley endorsed him last week, according to two sources familiar with the conversation.

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O’Malley’s office declined to comment on the call, and O’Rourke’s advisers did not respond to requests for comment.

But following their discussion, O’Malley suggested to a former adviser that O’Rourke appeared to be leaning toward running.

“It sounds like he’s seeing green and yellow lights, and not a whole lot of red lights,” said Boyd Brown, a former South Carolina lawmaker and former Democratic National Committee member who is national senior adviser to a “Draft Beto” campaign.

In his own exchange of text messages with O’Rourke, Brown said, “His response was very noncommittal … It was just ‘Thanks — a lot of decisions to be made, a lot of discussions to be had.’”

O’Rourke’s reticence to engage publicly in the 2020 campaign could put him at a competitive disadvantage in Iowa, where Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) drew overflow crowds as she touched off her presidential campaign over the weekend. Warren has already rolled out a team of four high-level Iowa staffers with extensive caucus experience.

Other top-tier presidential contenders, including Sens. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), toured Iowa last fall. Harris, who also contributed $25,000 to the state Democratic Party, is about to embark on a national book tour; another likely candidate, Julián Castro, is preparing to formally announce his 2020 campaign on Saturday.

Despite multiple invitations to O’Rourke to appear in Iowa, “we still haven’t heard anything,” said Sean Bagniewski, chairman of the Polk County Democrats. “At this point, I think a lot of folks are starting to assume that he’s not getting in — and move on to other people.”

“If you want to win Iowa, you have to come to Iowa,” he said. “I don’t think [O’Rourke] has missed his window, but it’s not just getting here. Before you get here, you need to have a team who can get it together … You’re starting to miss the window on the major hires.”

Of O’Rourke’s avoidance of early nominating states, Bagniewski said, “It’s strange … It’s really strange.”

George Appleby, a Des Moines-based attorney who has long been active in presidential campaigns in Iowa, said, “Being on the ground in Iowa, I feel the urgency for people to get in that maybe people outside of the state would not feel.”

Noting that the Iowa caucuses are only 13 months away and considering “the amount of money that you’re going to have to raise to be considered to be viable,” Appleby said, “Boy, oh boy, it seems to me you’ve got to get here pretty soon.”

If he elects to run, many supporters of O’Rourke believe the timing now could be fortuitous for a border-state Democrat, with the government shutdown focusing attention of immigration and President Donald Trump’s proposed border wall.

O’Rourke has maintained a visible presence on the issue — though only in Texas — since the November elections, walking across the border from El Paso to Juarez to meet with asylum seekers and visiting a detention camp for migrant children at Tornillo. On Christmas Eve, he was photographed passing out pizza slices to immigrant children in El Paso.

Over the holidays, O’Rourke spent time with his wife and children in New Mexico’s Sierra Blanca mountain range, posting photographs on Instagram of them building an igloo.

“Amy’s sitting next to me on the couch as we try to stay up to midnight,” he wrote. “She asked me if I remembered where we were last year at this time. We’d just finished a week on the road in west Texas, Rankin, Odessa, Aspermont, Sterling City, Colorado City, Big Spring, Anson, Guthrie, and after Amarillo we drove west to her parents’ place in New Mexico to spend New Year’s Eve. The next year, 2018, felt like 10 years. It felt like no time at all. So much happened, met so many amazing people, traveled so many thousands of miles. Got to be part of something so special... very grateful for this past year and for everyone who was a part of it. Here’s to 2019!”

With O’Rourke’s seeming lack of urgency, supporters are ratcheting up their efforts to draft him into the race — and to prepare a national infrastructure for him should he decide to run. On Monday, a “Draft Beto” campaign announced the addition of strategists to its effort in the early nominating states of South Carolina and Nevada.

In addition to Brown, Jones, who worked as a chief strategist for Joe Cunningham’s stunning upset victory in a congressional race last year, will be the group’s South Carolina state director, and officials said they are interviewing strategists in Iowa and New Hampshire, as well.

“We’ll treat this like a presidential campaign until I hear otherwise,” Brown said.

He called O’Rourke’s road trip “a good indication that he’s looking at doing this.”

“A little out of the ordinary,” he said. “But … this guy’s got this thing figured out better than I do. Who am I to judge?”

O’Rourke told an audience in El Paso before he left Congress that he would turn to Medium as his venue for engaging with the public as a private citizen. His campaign infrastructure is so minimal that associates half-expect that he would drop any announcement without warning. But the signals he has sent so far are few.

In New Hampshire, attorney and Democratic activist Jay Surdukowski, who co-chaired O’Malley’s 2016 presidential campaign in the state, said Democrats “are so spoiled. We’re used to people hounding us, not the other way around.”

But he said most other 2020 candidates are not coming off an all-consuming Senate run, as O’Rourke is.

“I’m willing to cut him a lot of slack. He just came off a two-year slog,” Surdukowski said. “He’s still in that kind of magic window where he could still make a splash.”

