Group launches campaign to ‘Draft Beto’ for 2020 White House bid

A group of Democratic activists on Tuesday launched a campaign to draft Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-Texas) into running for president in 2020.

The “Draft Beto” campaign will focus on raising $1 million to “both convince him to run and give him a head start in the primary.”

{mosads}O’Rourke is considered a potential 2020 presidential candidate after his energetic but unsuccessful bid to unseat Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) in the November midterm elections.

He finishes his congressional term on Jan. 3 and has yet to make an announcement regarding his potential candidacy.

O’Rourke told the Dallas Morning News this week that he hasn’t “even really begun the serious work of making a decision.”

A CNN poll of likely Iowa caucus-goers released Saturday showed O’Rourke trailing only former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) among potential Democratic candidates.

The “Draft Beto” group is the second organization to be formed since O’Rourke’s Senate campaign, following “Draft Beto 2020,” which has mostly focused on New Hampshire.

The new group includes “former Beto and Obama staffers, actors, social media influencers, a Google employee, a NY public defender, and former Democratic Congressional candidates,” according to its website.

Those social media influences include actor Misha Collins, who has 2.9 million Twitter followers, and voice actor Tara Strong, who has close to 400,000.

The former congressional candidates involved are Mallory Hagan, who ran in Alabama, and Renee Hoagenson, who ran in Missouri.