Speaking at a downtown rally near the border with Mexico, O’Rourke said that his hometown El Paso, its embrace of immigration and its rich ties with Mexico, represented the best of the American experience.
Quoting King, he said El Paso and its Mexican neighbor of Ciudad Juárez were “caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.”
He added: “This is a campaign for America, for everyone in America.”
His words and the setting on the street that connects El Paso with Ciudad Juárez, symbolized what his campaign said would be one of O’Rourke’s themes — a “unifying vision for bridging divides” to unite Americans from all walks of life.
But the speech by O’Rourke, a former three-term member of Congress, comes at a time of extraordinary discord over immigration, with a surge of migrants trying to enter the United States and President Donald Trump threatening to seal off the border in the coming week. El Paso has been a flashpoint for much of that unrest, with hundreds of migrants now being held in a makeshift encampment near where he spoke.
In El Paso, and later Saturday in rallies in Houston and outside the state’s Capitol in Austin, O’Rourke planned to stress climate change, criminal justice reform, health care, the economy and immigration, all topics that have emerged as major issues in the effort by Democrats to unseat Trump in 2020.
With thousands of supporters expected to attend Saturday’s rally in El Paso, some had already headed to the site Friday night to scout the location, looking for the best position to view the speech.
“We want to be close,” said Bertha Bourgeois, 72, of El Paso, an O’Rourke booster who was watching workers assemble a media platform for his speech. “I like his views. I like how he thinks.” Volunteers wearing black-and-white BETO T-shirts began arriving at 7 a.m. Saturday in anticipation of O’Rourke’s appearance at 10 a.m. local time.
The campaign also said it was livestreaming the event to 1,000 volunteer-organized watch parties across the country.
El Paso Republicans, meanwhile, were set to sponsor a counter-rally one block away.
O’Rourke, 46, grew up in this border town, the son of a local political figure and a furniture store operator. He had little name recognition until last year, when he became a national figure during his unsuccessful effort to unseat Sen. Ted Cruz, a Republican.
With a progressive sheen and grassroots appeal, O’Rourke set fundraising records in that Senate campaign. He continued that record-setting pace in the 24 hours after announcing his White House ambitions two weeks ago, raising more than $6.1 million online in one day and outpacing the $5.9 million collected by Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont in his first day.
Some recent polls place O’Rourke at third in popularity among Democrats expected to be in the race, behind former Vice President Joe Biden, who has not yet announced his intentions, and Sanders.
Marta Lopez, 71, a retired state worker from El Paso, had come to the rally wearing one of the BETO T-shirts. “We’ve lived here all our lives, and I feel we don’t need a wall,” said Lopez, adding that she admires O’Rourke’s positions on immigration as well as his decision not to accept PAC money.
O’Rourke was to be joined at the rally Saturday by his wife, Amy, and their three children, as well as Rep. Veronica Escobar, his successor in the House of Representatives.
Since announcing his candidacy March 14, O’Rourke has spent much of his time on a listening tour around the country.
He has made immigration issues a central focus. At a recent appearance in Milwaukee, he spoke about the harmony of El Paso’s multicultural environment and added, “We have nothing to fear from immigrants from, really, anywhere in the world, but certainly those that arrive at our southern border.”
For his campaign kickoff, O’Rourke chose a location just over a mile north of the Paso del Norte International Bridge linking the United States and Mexico.
The crossing has emerged as a flashpoint in Trump’s efforts to seal the border. Faced with hundreds of refugees trying to enter the United States daily, border agents have begun holding the migrants in a makeshift pen beneath the bridge. O’Rourke visited the bridge earlier in the week.
Some of the tensions shadowed O’Rourke’s event.
The rally area was partly hemmed in by a construction site. As the crowd built, several supporters of O’Rourke said they were intimidated by a gantlet of pro-Trump protesters blocking their way.
“They were just very confrontational and yelling scary stuff at us,” said Thelma Ramos, 38, of El Paso. Ramos said her 13-year-old daughter, Maya, was in tears as they walked past the Trump supporters, who were yelling, “Beto’s lying to you,” and “Build the wall.” Others carried signs saying that O’Rourke supported abortion both “before and after” birth.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.