| November 20, 2019 | Krissia Palomo | campus editor |
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Since 1994, there has not been a statewide elected Democrat in the state of Texas, but in 2018, Beto O’Rourke set out to change that with a simple but powerful message: go everywhere and engage everyone. Yet it seems like everywhere he went, the media never followed and the small amount of coverage on his campaign was mostly negative.
O’Rourke announced he was entering the presidential race Mar. 14 in a Vanity Fair interview.
“I’m just born to be in it,” O’Rourke said in the interview. From that moment, the media’s criticism regarding his privilege as a white male started showing up and thus began the media war on Beto O’Rourke.
The morning O’Rourke announced the beginning of his presidential campaign, he uploaded a video to social media where he was sitting next to his wife, Amy O’Rourke. In the video, Amy doesn’t say a word but instead smiles at her husband. It wasn’t long before the media dissected the situation and criticized O’Rourke for not letting his wife speak.
The first 24 hours of O’Rourke’s presidential campaign were crucial. The amount of money he raised would determine whether or not his spot in the race was safe, at least for the first few months.
O’Rourke did not immediately disclose numbers with any media outlet. This led to speculation of an underwhelming amount of money raised. Of course, O’Rourke proved otherwise by raising the most of any announced candidate at the time.
When O’Rourke was the only candidate to speak boldly about gun violence prevention and imposing stricter gun regulations, some deemed his comments irresponsible and blamed him for pushing Republicans further away from compromising on gun legislation, even though he held no public office and had no power to take away anyone’s guns.
The media has a lot of power to skew a voter’s beliefs about any matter. Unfortunately for Beto O’Rourke, he had to deal with criticism from all sides, including his own, and his campaign was irreparably damaged.
