El Paso Democrat Beto O’Rourke, who announced Thursday that he is running for president, had been teasing a presidential bid for weeks. Speculation approximately his intentions brought on the conservative Club for Growth to release a television advert looking to weaken enthusiasm for O’Rourke among Democratic number one electorate. The ad argues that O’Rourke has coasted via existence due to “white male privilege” and that he is a much cry from former President Barack Obama, as many have drawn comparisons among the 2 Democrats. The two-minute industrial makes four claims approximately O’Rourke, some of that is just like statements made with the aid of his opposition throughout his marketing campaign for the U.S. Senate against Ted Cruz. We determined to take a look at every to declare in separate reality checks. The claims and our scores are offered beneath, so as in their appearance inside the advert. Use the links furnished to view each reality-take a look at in its entirety. Club for Growth provided a reality sheet detailing the supply for each statement inside the advertisement. Sources encompass newspaper articles and other resources online.
O’Rourke did no longer go back a request for comment. Claim: “His father-in-regulation, a billionaire actual estate developer who bankrolled a Super PAC to shop for Beto a congressional seat…” Rating: Mostly False O’Rourke married Amy Hoover Sanders in the early 2000s. Her father, William Sanders, is a rich real estate developer who grew up in El Paso. While rich, Sanders isn’t always considered a billionaire. He contributed $five,000 without delay to O’Rourke’s congressional marketing campaign in 2012. Camp II Partners, a firm with ties to Sanders, contributed $37,500 to a Super PAC that spent cash advertising towards O’Rourke’s opponent. Other donors contributed extensively higher amounts to the percent, in a few cases giving extra than $500,000. Claim: “…This after Beto did his bidding on the El Paso City Council, pushing a downtown redevelopment scheme to bulldoze a negative Hispanic community at the same time as enriching builders like his father-in-regulation.” Rating: Half True O’Rourke served at the El Paso City Council from 2005 until 2011. During that point, he supported an offer calling for redeveloping approximately 300 acres in downtown El Paso, including a predominately Hispanic community. The plan becomes spearheaded through the Paso Del Norte Group, a non-public affiliation of dozens of enterprise leaders in El Paso that was co-founded using Sanders, O’Rourke’s father-in-regulation. The plan changed into pitched as a collaboration among the metropolis and neighborhood commercial enterprise leaders and called for the use of two primary methods of obtaining assets inside the area slated for redevelopment: eminent domain and an actual property investment consider, hooked up for the only reason of acquiring belongings within the location. Sanders fashioned a real property funding consider to attain belongings below the plan, but he pledged no longer to hold any income he earned. O’Rourke spoke in choose of the idea however he abstained on key votes associated with using eminent domain and other elements of the task. Two ethics court cases had been filed towards O’Rourke alleging warfare of interest because of Sanders’ involvement inside the plan — the town’s ethics commission has disregarded both. Claim: “Obama championed progressive causes on campus, looking for to fight inequality and harmful stereotypes. Beto perpetuated them, casting aspersions on operating ladies whose ‘best qualifications seemed to be massive breasts and tight buttocks.’”
In a 1991 overview for the Columbia University student newspaper, O’Rourke criticized the Broadway musical “The Will Rogers Follies.” “Keith Carradine within the lead function central through perma-smile actresses whose simplest qualifications seem to be their phenomenally huge breasts and tight buttocks,” he wrote. O’Rourke later apologized for his feedback and said Politico he is “ashamed of what I wrote.” Claim: “Obama went on to grow to be the first African American editor of the Harvard Law Review, breaking boundaries. Beto crashed into them, causing a collision at the same time as using drunk, then fleeing the scene to keep away from accountability.”
O’Rourke becomes arrested in 1998 for using even as intoxicated in Anthony, a small metropolis in El Paso County. A witness instructed police officers that they saw O’Rourke riding at high speed on I-10 before losing manipulate of his car and hanging a truck traveling inside the same path, in line with a police report of the incident published by using the Houston Chronicle. The vehicle became despatched throughout the middle median and into the lane moving inside the contrary path. O’Rourke then tried to power away, but the witness stopped him. Law enforcement arrived at the scene and arrested O’Rourke. Police pronounced that O’Rourke recorded a 0.136 and zero.134 on police breathalyzers, above a blood-alcohol stage of 0.10, the nation prison restricts on time.