More Beto background

An earlier post carried a little news about O'Rourke's funding from big oil.  Here's more on the subject...

[A] Capital & Main review of congressional votes shows that even as O’Rourke has represented one of the most Democratic congressional districts in the entire country, he has in many instances undermined his own party’s efforts to halt the GOP agenda, frequently voting against the majority of House Democrats in support of Republican bills and Trump administration positions.

  Capital & Main

As I said in the earlier post, it stands to reason that O'Rourke would have to be pretty conservative to be in Texas politics. I wasn't defending him. Just noting the obvious. So I thought. Turns out, I was wrong about even that.

FiveThirtyEight has calculated that in [Trump's first two years], O’Rourke has voted for the Trump administration position on legislation roughly 30 percent of the time. The website said that is above what analysts predict would come from a legislator representing a district as Democratic as O’Rourke’s. For comparison, O’Rourke’s congressional district votes more Democratic than most districts in Massachusetts, according to the Cook Political Report.

[...]

Capital & Main reviewed the 167 votes O’Rourke has cast in opposition to the majority of his own party in the House during his six-year tenure in Congress. Many of those votes were not progressive dissents alongside other left-leaning lawmakers but were instead votes to help pass Republican-sponsored legislation. In many cases, Democratic lawmakers said that those measures were designed to help corporate interests dismantle Obama administration programs and regulations.

Amid persistently high economic inequality and a climate change crisis, O’Rourke has voted for GOP bills that his fellow Democratic lawmakers said reinforced Republicans’ tax agenda, chipped away at the Affordable Care Act, weakened Wall Street regulations, boosted the fossil fuel industry and bolstered Trump’s immigration policy. [...] During the previous administration, President Barack Obama’s White House issued statements slamming two GOP bills backed by the 46-year-old Democratic legislator.

[...]

Such votes underscore his membership in the New Democrat Coalition, the faction of House Democrats most closely aligned with business interests.

[...]

Much of the party elite’s support for an O’Rourke candidacy has not mentioned his policy record or agenda.

[...]

Each vote reviewed below was one in which O’Rourke broke from the majority of legislators in his own party.

Continue reading.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.