ABC News(EL PASO, Texas) — Former Texas congressman Beto O’Rourke is looking to revive his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination Thursday with a speech from El Paso, Texas, his hometown, in the wake of a mass shooting there that resulted in the deaths of 22 people.
The former congressman will be returning to the trail after his El Paso speech, first in Mississippi on Friday, in the aftermath of historic immigration raids, and then in Arkansas for the Democratic Party’s Clinton Dinner on Saturday.
O’Rourke raised considerable attention for his strong response to the shooting, which included traveling to El Paso and cancelling all presidential campaign events, including eschewing the famous Iowa State Fair.
In the nearly two weeks he’s been off the campaign trail, O’Rourke has attended local vigils, high school memorials and protests against President Donald Trump’s visit to the city. He also crossed the border to the city of Juárez to visit with the family of a Mexican national who was killed in the shooting.
On the day of the president’s visit, O’Rourke said on MSNBC that Trump has made it “very clear” that he’s a white supremacist. The alleged shooter in the heavily Hispanic city admitted to law enforcement that he was the shooter and was specifically targeting “Mexicans,” according to a police affidavit, and O’Rourke said Trump bears responsibility for the shooting in an interview on ABC’s This Week the day after the shooting.
“Someone who describes Mexican immigrants as rapists and criminals… he doesn’t just tolerate, he encourages the kind of open racism and the violence that necessarily follows, that we saw here in El Paso, Texas,” O’Rourke said. “So in addition to sensible gun policies — and we must adopt and sign those into law — we also need to connect the dots on this hatred and racism that is coming from the highest positions of power in this country.”
During his time in El Paso, O’Rourke has faced some calls to drop out of the presidential race and instead run for Senate again, after coming close to defeating Sen. Ted Cruz in 2018. The Houston Chronicle wrote an editorial titled, “Beto, come home. Texas needs you,” asking him to consider switching races.
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