In The Wake Of A Hometown Tragedy, Beto O'Rourke Finds His Voice

BETO O’ROURKE SITS IN AN ARMCHAIR IN HIS El Paso living room, tapping his foot and trying not to talk about himself.

- Lissandra Villa

It’s three days after the mass shooting that left at least 22 dead and 26 injured at a Walmart just under 10 miles from where his family lives. His kids have strewn arts and crafts across the coffee table. (Friendship bracelets, in just about any color you could want.) His wife Amy is sitting in the chair next to his.

O’Rourke is talking about the shooter. “This guy who came here was afraid of this community because he had been taught to be afraid,” he says. “These border communities are safe not despite but because they’re communities of immigrants. There’s something very special about these places.”

In the days since the murders, O’Rourke, who represented El Paso in Congress from 2013 until the start of this year, has emerged as a voice for a shattered community of 680,000 that has for years been among the safest in the U.S. He immediately returned from Nevada, where he was campaigning for the Democratic presidential nomination. He’s met with victims and their families. He’s gone to vigils. He’s donated blood. And he’s tapped into the anger that has been building, here and throughout the U.S., as each mass shooting is met with “thoughts and prayers” but no significant legislative action.

O’Rourke has been unsparing in his criticism of Donald Trump, calling the President a white supremacist and assigning blame for the attack to his rhetoric. “When you look at what he has said and done in its totality, it is unmistakable the intent,” O’Rourke says. “This is how it happens. Using his pulpit and his access to the country through social media, mass communications and the media. Sending these signals out unambiguously.”