Beto makes his case in Charles City

By James Grob, jgrob@charlescitypress.com

Randy Cross used to be a Democrat, then he changed sides and started to vote Republican.

Beto O’Rourke just might convince him to change sides again.

“After hearing Beto, I might be swayed to go back to voting Democratic,” Cross said. “I think he’s really an inspirational speaker, and I like him, you know. I just met him but I feel like I made a personal connection with him. I think he’s a good man, I really do.”

Cross, of Charles City, works as a Medicaid provider and has 20 years in the health care field. He was among about 70 people who crowded into the living room of the home of Todd and Ann Prichard in Charles City on Tuesday, as O’Rourke talked to potential voters and answered questions.

Cross said he especially liked O’Rourke’s stances on environmental issues. The candidate said he favors much of what’s known as the “Green New Deal.”

“When he’s talking about the Green New Deal and saving the planet, I’m all for it,” Cross said.

O’Rourke is in the middle of a five-day campaign swing across the state. He also made stops at Wartburg College in Waverly and a private residence in Fayette Tuesday afternoon and evening.

Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke, 46, officially announced his campaign for the Democratic Party nomination for president on March 14. The one-time El Paso, Texas, city councilman is among more than 20 candidates seeking the opportunity to face President Donald Trump in the 2020 election.

Recent polling among registered voters shows former Vice-President Joe Biden as the current frontrunner among the candidates, with a substantial lead over Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. O’Rourke is among a second tier of candidates that includes former South Bend, Indiana. Mayor Pete Buttigieg, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and California Sen. Kamala Harris — all polling in the high single digits.

Iowa’s first-in-the-nation caucuses are scheduled for Feb. 3, 2020.

O’Rourke didn’t speak about any of his Democratic opponents on Tuesday, instead saving his criticism for President Trump. One of those in attendance wondered if Democrats were gun-shy about taking legal action against Trump.

“The fact that this president invited the participation of a foreign power into our elections is beyond dispute,” O’Rourke said. “After the Mueller Report was delivered, one of his first calls was to Vladimir Putin, with whom he spent an hour on the phone, and described the results of the investigation as a hoax.”

O’Rourke said Trump’s actions are dangerous to the nation.

“He’s doing nothing to defend this democracy, or the safety of the ballot box, against the next attack,” he said. “His obstruction of justice, which is as clear as day … if there are not consequences, if there is not accountability, if there’s not justice, that’s not only a green light for Russia to continue to interfere, it’s a green light for this administration and future administrations to believe they are above the law in a country that’s supposed to be defined by rule of law.”

O’Rourke said he believed that Congress should take any and all action available, regardless of the political consequences.

“If we turn our back on this because of the political inconvenience, or the polling, or the next election, this democracy … I believe will begin to unravel,” he said.

O’Rourke represented Texas’ 16th congressional district in the U.S. House from 2013-19. He ran for the U.S. Senate against incumbent Republican Ted Cruz in 2018, and though he narrowly lost to Cruz, his campaign received significant national attention, particularly for its ability to draw substantial crowds and raise record funds in a traditionally Republican state.

He spent a lot of time talking about immigration issues, which he said he sees close up in El Paso.

“The truth flies in the face of the hateful rhetoric used by people like Steve King and Donald Trump,” he said. “Not only are Mexican immigrants not ‘rapists and criminals,’ but they commit violent crimes at a lower rate than those who are born in this country.”

O’Rourke compared the rhetoric of Trump to the rhetoric of the Nazis leading up to World War II.

“Asylum-seekers are described by our president as animals and an infestation — an infestation is how you talk about a cockroach, something subhuman — a word that you might expect to be used in the Third Reich, but not in the United States of America in 2019,” O’Rourke said.

“Klansman, white supremacists, Nazis — our president says they are very fine people. And he tweeted out a video conflating a Muslim member of Congress … with the attackers on 9-11, inspiring even more Islamophobia, and paranoia, and hatred, fear and attacks.”

O’Rourke said that one of the first things he’d do if elected president would be to change that rhetoric and change immigration laws.

“We need to make sure we reverse these polices once in office,” he said. “No longer separating families. Reuniting them, with every effort we can possibly muster. We need to rewrite our immigration laws, in our own image, to reflect that we shouldn’t be tolerating or respecting our differences, we should be embracing them. It’s the very source of our strength, it’s what makes us exceptional in the world and in world history. To turn our back on that, is to turn our back on our future.”

He said that the rhetoric not only offends the sensibility, it also leads to a rise in hate crimes.

“There is a real cost and consequence to the language that he uses. You don’t get kids into cages unless they’re first defined as something other than human. We should call it out where we find it, and we should describe in real direct and honest terms,” he said. “That is racism, in its purest form, and it’s coming from the highest office in the land.”

O’Rourke also talked about health care, and said he favors a “Medicare for all who want it” approach.

“What we know right now is that beyond the tens of millions of people who have no care at all — the fact that diabetes still claims lives 97 years after insulin was invented in this, the wealthiest country, when we have people dying of curable cancers and even the flu in the United States,” O’Rourke said. “We have people who are underinsured or have insufficient insurance. They can’t afford their premiums or bridge their deductibles, or even make their co-pays. Some of them are dying as a result.”

He said that everyone should be guaranteed high-quality care in this country, with no exceptions.

“The answer to this is a program that enrolls every single American who is not cared for today in Medicare,” O’Rourke said. “Everyone who has insufficient insurance today elects to move into Medicare, if they choose, and those who have employer-sponsored insurance and like it because it works for them and their families are able to keep that. For me, that is the surest, quickest and most affordable path to get to the goal that you and I share.”

He said he believes there is enough common ground between Democrat, independents and Republicans to make that a reality “sooner rather than later.”

O’Rourke also called for better investment in the cures that fight life-threatening and deadly diseases.

“We’re the wealthiest, most powerful, most technologically and medically advanced nation in the history of the world, but it’s ours to lose,” he said. “They’re within reach, and if we fail to find the cures, they’re going to be exponentially more expensive to treat and take care of over the long term.”