El Paso Democrat Beto O’Rourke, who announced Thursday 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 the Democratic primary electorate. The ad argues that O’Rourke has coasted on existence due to “white male privilege.” He is a much cry from former President Barack Obama, as many have drawn comparisons between 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 everyone to declare in separate reality checks. The claims and our scores are offered beneath, as in their appearance inside the advert. Use the links furnished to view each reality-take a look at it 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 online resources.
O’Rourke no longer went back for a request for comment. Claim: “His father-in-law, a billionaire real 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 $ 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 on advertising towards O’Rourke’s opponent. Other donors contributed extensively higher amounts to the percent, in a few cases giving more 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-law.” Rating: Half True O’Rourke served on the El Paso City Council from 2005 until 2011.
During that point, he supported an offer calling for redevelopment of approximately 300 acres in downtown El Paso, including a predominantly Hispanic community. The plan becomes spearheaded through the Paso Del Norte Group, a non-public association of dozens of enterprise leaders in El Paso co-founded using Sanders, O’Rourke’s father-in-law. 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 within the area slated for redevelopment: eminent domain and an actual property investment consideration, linked to acquire property 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 favor of the idea; however, he abstained on key votes associated with eminent domain and other elements of the task. Two ethics court cases had been filed against O’Rourke, alleging conflict of interest because of Sanders’ involvement in the plan — the town’s ethics commission has disregarded both. Claim: “Obama championed progressive causes on campus, looking 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 to 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 being drunk, then fleeing the scene to keep away from accountability.”
O’Rourke was 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 his car and crashing into a truck traveling in the same direction, in line with a police report of the incident published by the Houston Chronicle. The vehicle became dispatched throughout the middle median and into the lane moving in the opposite direction. 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 level of 0.10, the national prison restricts on time.