Beto O’Rourke’s day 1 collection beats all Democrats in 2020 White House race

Beto O’Rourke, a former three-term Congressman from Texas, has raised $6.1 million in the first 24 hours of announcing his run for the Democratic presidential nomination, surpassing rival contenders Bernie Sanders ($5.9 million) and Kamala Harris ($1.5 million) and all others in the fray so far.

Fund raising is considered one of the key measures of a campaign’s viability and support, and O’Rourke just announced with the first-day collection, he will be a serious contender as many Democrats and Republicans believe he will be.

“In just 24 hours, Americans across this country came together to prove that it is possible to run a true grassroots campaign for president,” O’Rourke said in a statement, “a campaign by all of us for all of us that answers not to the PACs (political action committees), corporations and special interests but to the people.”

Former vice-president Joe Biden, who has signalled a run but has not announced it yet, leads the polls though, and by a wide margin. He is ahead of the rest of the pack by 7 percentage points, in the RealClearPolitics average of polls.

O’Rourke is 46, around the same age as when President Barack Obama launched his White House in 2007. And his candidacy is galvanizing Democrats as they were by the former president. Comparisons between the two began sometime during O’Rourke’s failed bid in 2018 to unseat Texas senator Ted Cruz, a Republican in a deeply Republican state.

He raised an estimated $79 million then, not only from Texas Democrats but also party supporter and members around the country excited by his run. Together with his use of social media — video clips would go routinely viral — he became a national phenomenon. And he nearly beat Cruz.

President Donald Trump, who is keeping a close eye on the sprawling Democratic field, commented last week about O’Rourke’s use of his arms during a town-hall interaction with voters in Iowa, and not kindly. But, notably, he took time off from work to watch, presumably to know what to expect.