- Beto O'Rourke earned a national reputation running against Ted Cruz for the Texas Senate seat, and he is now running for the Democratic Party's nomination for President in 2020.
- His wife, Amy O'Rourke, has had a significant presence on the campaign trail, aking appearances in Iowa, New Hampshire, and New York.
- O'Rourke will appear in tonight's Democratic Party debates.
When Beto O'Rourke officially entered the presidential race on March 14, he released a video of himself and his wife, Amy O'Rourke, comfortably seated on a couch in their El Paso home. He began his announcement with "Amy and I." As he listed off a quick-hits summary of his platform, she watched him in admiration, her arm rested on his throughout.
The video set the tone for a campaign in which Amy is likely to play a large role. It seems that we'll be seeing a lot of Amy in the coming months—and even more if she becomes the next First Lady. So just who is Amy O'Rourke?
Like Beto, Amy was born and raised in Texas.
Amy O'Rourke, née Hoover Sanders, was born into a wealthy Texas family, headed up by local real estate magnate William D. Sanders. Her father was a big deal in the local community. "When I spoke to kids in El Paso, I would tell them that someday you can become Bill Sanders," an El Paso businessman told the New York Times.
Amy would go on to major in Psychology and minor in Spanish at Williams College. She spent a year teaching kindergarten in Guatemala City before returning to El Paso, where her family had moved. It was there that a 23-year-old Amy met Beto O'Rourke.
She hit it off with her future husband on their first date.
The couple were introduced through Amy's aunt, and had their first date at Juárez's famous Kentucky Club, where the likes of Elizabeth Taylor and Steve McQueen had partied. "It was a little bit of a test, to see if she was up for an adventure,” O'Rourke told the Washington Post.
Amy was planning to apply to graduate school at the time, but O'Rourke tactfully dissuaded her. "He was giving me reasons one through ten of why I needed to stay in El Paso," she told Vanity Fair. "And I quickly learned that he just is an ultimate El Paso salesman."
The pair married ten months later—not long after O'Rourke won his first city council race. They have three children together: Ulysses, 12, Molly, 10, and Henry, 8.
She's had a successful career in education.
After returning to El Paso, Amy began teaching in a combined first and second grade classroom. Eventually, she worked with nonprofit Centro de Salud Familiar La Fe to establish the La Fe Preparatory School, a dual-language elementary charter school. She served as the school's first superintendent.
In 2013, Amy took over as the as the owner and manager of Stanton Street, the web and software development company her husband co-founded in 1999. She sold it in 2017.
These days, Amy is the "choose to excel director" at CREEED, a nonprofit focused on helping students in El Paso County public schools.
Amy's father and Beto O'Rourke were once mired in an El Paso scandal.
During O'Rourke's days as a city councilman, he aligned himself with his father-in-law's plan to redevelop downtown El Paso. Between 2006 and 2008, he either voted for the redevelopment or abstained, despite backlash from the area's current residents. The downtown population was largely lower-class and Hispanic, and had reason to fear that they would lose their homes through eminent domain. "Mr. O’Rourke was basically the pretty face of this very ugly plan against our most vulnerable neighborhoods," a local historian told the New York Times.
Nonprofit organization Paso del Norte Group played a key role in orchestrating the plan. O'Rourke, his future wife Amy, and her father William D. Sanders were all members of the invitation-only group for a time. An ethics complaint also claimed that O'Rourke's company, Stanton Street, had provided services to the group.
O'Rourke has said that he never voted for eminent domain, and that he didn't have a financial stake in the plan, per the Times.
Amy will be a supportive campaign member.
During Beto's senate campaign, Amy was frequently by his side—and often impressed by what he was pulling off. She told Vanity Fair about the moment she realized the power of her husband's charisma. "Every seat was taken, every wall, every space in the room was filled with probably a thousand people," Amy recalled. "You could feel the floor moving almost. It was not totally clear that Beto was what everybody was looking for, but just like that people were so ready for something. So that was totally shocking. I mean, like, took-my-breath-away shocking."
It seems that Amy will be just as involved this time around. When Beto announced that he was running for president, he tweeted out a video of himself with Amy, saying "Amy and I are happy to share with you that I'm running to serve you as the next president of the United State of America."
Just last week, in an effort to turn around disappointing poll numbers, Beto and Amy appeared together on The View, their first joint national interview. The couple responded to criticism of Beto's comments during his announcement video in March, in which he joked that Amy takes a disproportionately large role in raising their children and he "sometimes helps out" with their three kids.
Amy says she wasn't upset with her husbands comments—or the role he plays in childrearing. "[Beto] was really just trying to illustrate that it is tough to manage everything at home and I think he was trying to acknowledge that in a way" said Amy. "And if I didn't feel his appreciation and his love, and his worth than I would probably have been upset."
But she has her reservations about life in the spotlight.
Beto revealed to Texas Monthly that when he first told Amy that he was planning to run for congress in 2010, she burst into tears. And in preparation for her husband's presidential run, she picked up Michelle Obama's Becoming. Amy was not pleased by what she learned about campaigning. "She was kind of pissed at me when we got home," Beto told Vanity Fair. "Almost like, 'You fucker.'"
Chloe is a News Writer for Townandcountrymag.com, where she covers royal news, from the latest additions to Meghan Markle’s staff to Queen Elizabeth’s monochrome fashions; she also writes about culture, often dissecting TV shows like The Marvelous Mrs Maisel and Killing Eve.
