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O'Rourke's associates have been talking to Democratic activists in recent weeks about a presidential campaign. This week, these conversations began to move to a more formal discussion of staff positions with the final campaign, said a person familiar with the discussions, although no job offer was forthcoming. made.
Another change occurred nine days ago: O & # 39; Rourke eliminated the "for Texas" from its digital presence. The emails sent by his team that came from BetoForTexas.com now come from BetoORourke.com. And while previously BetoORourke.com had redirected the Senate campaign from last year to its website, now is the other way around.
The change was a faint but eloquent sign as the former Texas Congressman ruled out another race in the US Senate and is about to announce his plans.
The presidential race is more and more expected in his hometown, but O & # 039; Rourke's friends and family say they're still waiting to find out when he'll show up for the race and when he will announce it.
"I think he should do it, I really want it," said his sister Charlotte O. Rourke in an interview with CNN at her home in El Paso. "I just think he's got it with people more than everyone else."
"Honestly, everyone is on board to do what he wants," she said.
She added that O 'Rourke had discussed in depth the pros and cons of a presidential campaign with his family several weeks ago, but that on Thursday morning he had not yet announced them what he was planning to do.
O 'Rourke's staff began reactivating the huge e-mail list he had built during his failed Senate bid in the mid-term elections of 2018. He had been dormant since December, until Rourke's team sends five emails over the last eight days – a step that could help remove inactive addresses, reactivate recipients, and prevent Sending new messages to spam before a major announcement.
The last two e-mails asked recipients to answer a survey about the most important issues for them, how they could work for a campaign and how to contact them – the type of information campaigns regularly collected. on the fans they hoped to become donors and volunteers.
Squeezing the schedule that he had presented to Oprah Winfrey a few weeks earlier, Mr. O. Rourke said Wednesday in a statement that he and his wife, Amy O'Rourke, " have made a decision about the best way to serve our country and we are excited to share it with everyone soon. "
"I want to make an announcement to everyone at the same time, I want to do it right," OWN Nourke told CNN smiling on Wednesday, before speaking at a news conference. Moms Demand Action event in El Paso.
His relatives read his comments – and the reality that he had no intention of becoming a candidate, he could have simply said – which would probably imply a presidential campaign.
"It sounded almost like a talking statement, in a way, but I do not know it," said Charlotte O. Rourke.
O 'Rourke has called some of his closest political allies outside of El Paso in recent days, said a person with whom he spoke this week. This person refused to reveal the details of their conversation, but boasted O 'Rourke as a powerful candidate for the presidency.
Anticipating an upcoming presidential announcement, two groups that have embarked in recent months to bring O & # Rourke into the presidential race and laid the groundwork for his campaign in the early-voting states are gearing up to activate the lists of supporters that they have built, as well as.
A group has prepared an explosion of emails to send its 30,000 subscribers to the O & # 39; Rourke website when it was launched. The group's leaders also came back with early-voting state activists who had organized protests to organize volunteers for a campaign O 'Rourke in recent days.
Another group has launched a "beto alert", planning to inform its 7,000 email subscribers and 2,500 SMS subscribers as soon as O & Rourke announces his plans and directs them to his web page. donations.
Near O 'Rourke's house, a neighbor, Michael Reyes, has printed his own stickers to cover the word "for the Senate" in his "Beto" sign with "For the President".
"He has a lot of potential and you can see it.You can see it.Hu, and all the fact that he's just a nice guy, an ordinary guy, we kinda need somebody like that up there that has the sight of ordinary people, "said Reyes.
For months, O 'Rourke has stated publicly and in talks with friends that his biggest hesitation about a presidential race is the time he has spent away from his three children – Ulysses, 12; Molly, 10; and Henry, 8 – after nearly two years on the road in the Senate.
O'Rourke went to high school in a boarding school in Virginia, and then to college in New York, partly because of a tense relationship with his own father, Pat O'Rourke, who was a local politician. The two men rebuilt their relationship and became much closer when O & # 39; Rourke returned to El Paso at the age of 20, said his sister, before his father was killed when a car was hit his bicycle in 2001. People close to O 'Rourke said believing history could shape his thinking.
"I think he's almost feeling like giving up his kids, and what trauma this is going to leave," said Charlotte O. Rourke. She explained that Mr. O. Rourke's conversations with his family focused on his logistics and that sometimes his wife was in the election campaign.
O 'Rourke "really put everything on the hot seat for a while there and he invested so much to get away from his family, and I know how much he wanted to be with them," he said. Tony Casas, a friend of O & # 39; Rourke. He was hired from his former Internet services firm, Stanton Street, and designed the black-and-white logo of O 'Rourke's Senate campaign.
According to friends, O 'Rourke was particularly concerned about the impact of a race on his eldest son.
Steve Ortega, a friend and former member of the Rourke OWC, said that he was at O & Rourke's during this year's National University Football Championship game.
"Beto was out of the room and I asked Odysseus," How is your father going back? And he says, "It's great, I love it," said Ortega. "It's at the age when spending time with one's parents is still cool."
O & # 39; Rourke recently said that after spending time at home with her kids in recent months, they were giving her more support.
In an interview with Winfrey in New York in early February, he joked that Ulysses "is about to be ready for me to leave the house."
On Wednesday evening, O 'Rourke – who had driven a bicycle several blocks away from the gun control group demonstration – refused to give further details on the timeline to reveal his decision regarding the presidential campaign. from 2020 or how it would do. so.
"I'm going to make an announcement soon, I'll make the same announcement to everyone at the same time," he told CNN. "That's all I can say for the moment."
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