Q&A: Beto O’Rourke and the future of the Democratic Party

By Noa Berz     4/22/25 10:19pm

Ask Beto O’Rourke about having the odds stacked against him. As a Democrat in Texas for the past 20 years, he knows the feeling better than anyone.

O’Rourke lost to incumbent Sen. Ted Cruz in a 2018 Senate race while serving as a U.S. representative of Texas’ 16th Congressional District, which encompasses most of El Paso and its surrounding areas, from 2013 to 2019. He unsuccessfully bid for the presidency in 2020 and lost the 2022 gubernatorial election to Gov. Greg Abbott. Now, he says he is committed to the fight against a president who has spent the last eight years constructing a bulwark against his opposition.

From research funding cuts to attacks on academic freedom, President Donald Trump’s second term has led to sweeping changes at Rice and other universities across the country. O’Rourke, who’s currently visiting college campuses across the country, came to Rice to talk with students.

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Rice Thresher: You’ve spoken outwardly about the importance of compromise to making progress in America, but currently, many see the role of Democrats as pushing back against Trump in his second presidency. Where do you draw the line between compromise and standing up against what Democrats would call tyranny?

Beto O’Rourke: There are things in which we should compromise. When I was in Congress, the only way I could get anything done as a member of the minority was to find common ground with members of the majority. It happened to be the Republican Party.

Sitting on the Veterans’ Affairs Committee, I introduced legislation to improve health care access for veterans, for example. The only way to get that bill that I wrote passed was to compromise with a Republican who liked the gist of it but didn’t like every detail of it. That compromise produced a bill that passed the House, passed the Senate, was signed into law by Donald Trump in his first administration. So not only do I believe in it, I have worked within that belief to produce things that have made life better for those that we serve. 

Where you don’t compromise is on your fundamental values and the core principles of this country. The rule of law, for example, the separation of powers, the recognition of three coequal branches of government — there is no compromise to be found there. 

This administration’s illegal deportation without due process of people who are legally here in the United States, and then refusing court orders to address this, is the kind of constitutional crisis that so many people have feared for so long, and it is playing out right now. 

RT: In response to threats to federal funding, Rice has renamed our office of DEI and retermed student diversity facilitators “community facilitators.” While Stanford and Princeton have both issued their support for Harvard’s refusal to comply with Trump’s demands, Rice has yet to follow suit. How should we as a university be responding to the sweeping changes being issued by the federal government right now?

BO: As within all great tests of the moral character of this country, those who remain silent become complicit in injustice. 

I am grateful for the example that Harvard is now setting, regardless of the president’s suspension of billions of dollars in federal funding, which, as you and I both know, is not to make anyone at Harvard rich, but is to invest in the research that will literally save lives, that will advance the interests of the United States of America. 

Now, as you know, the president is illegally directing the Internal Revenue Service to work towards suspending or eliminating Harvard’s nonprofit tax status. The fact that they’re showing such courage under fire is incredibly inspiring and is precisely the example that we need at this moment of truth. 

I really do think it’s incumbent upon all of us to take a stand. As we know in other examples of rising authoritarianism, when people step back, hoping that they can save their own skin or make a separate peace with the autocratic administration, they unfortunately find that ultimately they, too, will become a target. The time to stand together is now, not when Rice comes under attack.

RT: A lot of people are worried right now about the state of this country. What do you say to assuage their concerns? Or do you? Is it maybe better to take advantage of that anxiety and put it towards change?

BO: If you’re not concerned about what’s going on, you’re not awake. [This is] the single greatest attack on the Constitution, rule of law and our democracy in your lifetime or mine. 

I think you really have to go back to the Civil War to see anything like this. The incitement on the part of the president at the end of his first term to violence, to try to overturn a lawfully, legitimately, democratically decided election; his attempt to suspend the Constitution; his unlawful impoundment of congressionally appropriated funds. All of this demands our anger and our action.

Action can come in any number of forms. It is attending today’s town hall at Rice. It is showing up at protests. It is registering to vote. It’s helping others register to vote. It is preparing the ground to win political power in 2026. All of those things and many more are needed at this moment. Failing that, it’s hard to see us coming through, but my faith is in the American people. We have, for 248 years and counting, always come through. 

RT: In some of your recent town halls, you’ve stressed the failure of Democrats to reach voters in states that aren’t swing states that don’t usually get the attention during campaigns. What do you want to see change going forward? 

BO: The whole electoral premise of Kamala Harris’ campaign was the so-called ‘blue wall’ states, these seven battleground states. If she could just win those, well then, we’re going to win the presidency, and we’ll stop this existential threat to our democracy in the form of Donald Trump. Not only did we lose all those states, the very premise of that idea is completely bankrupt.

Texas — one of, if not the fastest growing states in the union after the 2030 census — will have even more electoral college votes. Many of those blue wall states will lose population and have fewer electoral college votes. In the presidential election after next, the only way a Democrat can get into the White House is to win sunbelt states like Texas and consistently win and compete in Georgia and Arizona and other states that, for far too long, the Democratic Party has written off. 

Texas is, I believe, ground zero, not just for the Democratic Party, but for the future of this country. And those of us who live here understand it and get it. We just need to make sure that everyone else does.

RT: You’ve been out of office for a while, doing more grassroots work, yet people still are inviting you to come to these things with people like Tim Walz and others, who have been more recently on the campaign trail. Why you? Why do the people want you? 

BO: I don’t know. I’m willing to show up anywhere, anytime, with anyone, as long as we can make progress towards saving this country and saving the state. 

I think the people recognize the work that we do with Powered by People. They recognize that we never give up. We never give in. It cannot be about an election, and it cannot be about a candidate and it cannot be about a person. If these things that you and I just spoke about are important to us, well, then we must remain in the fight, no matter our title. 

This is a deeply moral question and a deeply personal level of accountability that I think all of us must feel, and I certainly feel that, so when we got the invite from Rice, I said yes in a second. I’ve been trying to get on the Rice campus as a candidate, going back to 2017 when I first ran for Senate, and we’ve never been able to. This is the first time I’ve really been able to actually be on campus, meet with Rice students. Anyone can ask or say anything, and what I hope comes out of that is a really productive conversation and a commitment on the part of those who attend to do whatever it takes to save our country.

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