Beto Supporters Brace for 2020 Brawl

“Beto O’Rourke says he hasn’t decided yet if he will run for president. But here in his hometown, his supporters are bracing for a combative primary. And they point to a previous campaign — his 2012 run for Congress — as evidence that he can hold his own in an intraparty brawl,” Politico reports.

“Six years before the high-minded Texas Senate run that lifted his national star, O’Rourke felled an eight-term incumbent House Democrat, Silvestre Reyes, casting him as ineffectual and unethical in a bruising primary campaign. The race pit O’Rourke not only against Reyes, but then-President Obama, who endorsed the sitting congressman, and former President Bill Clinton, who campaigned for Reyes in the West Texas border district. In a stunning result, O’Rourke went to Congress, while Reyes became the only Texas incumbent to fail to win re-nomination that election year.”