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<\/a>\u201cI\u2019ve got to be on the timeline that works for my family and for the country,\u201d Beto O’Rourke told reporters when asked by POLITICO about the delay. | Matt Winkelmeyer\/Getty Images for SXSW<\/p><\/div><\/p>\n
‘It’s a bit much’: Beto drags out his 2020 tease at South by Southwest<\/h1>\nThe Texas Democrat confirmed more than a week ago that he’d made his decision on a potential run for president. He just won\u2019t say what it is.<\/h3>\n
By DAVID SIDERS<\/p>\n
AUSTIN, Texas \u2014 Beto O\u2019Rourke took his 2020 campaign tease to South by Southwest on Saturday \u2014 and even by this city\u2019s eccentric standards, the act was getting weird.<\/p>\n
With a thick crowd waiting in front of Austin\u2019s Paramount Theatre, O\u2019Rourke slipped into the premiere of his own documentary through an alley in the back. He waited for the lights to dim before joining the audience. And 10 days after declaring that he and his wife, Amy, had decided \u201chow we can best serve our country,\u201d he once again refused to discuss his 2020 plans.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want to make sure I do it the right way and I tell everyone at the same time, so I\u2019ll be doing that,\u201d he told reporters when asked by POLITICO about the delay. \u201cI\u2019ve got to be on the timeline that works for my family and for the country.\u201d<\/p>\n
What is unusual is not that O\u2019Rourke hasn\u2019t said yet if he is running \u2014 Joe Biden hasn\u2019t, either. It\u2019s that O\u2019Rourke, unlike any other potential presidential candidate, confirmed more than a week ago that he made his decision. He just won\u2019t say what it is.<\/p>\n
Instead, the politician who sowed his entire persona on a thread of authenticity \u2014 crisscrossing Texas while eschewing pollsters and political consultants in his Senate run last year \u2014 is now manufacturing suspense.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a bit much,\u201d said one Democratic strategist who has spoken with O\u2019Rourke about working on the 2020 campaign. \u201cThe question is, does he have a secret sauce that no one knows about \u2014 that no reporter, no operative, no strategist understands? Or is this just the \u2018Beto Show.\u2019 And if this is just the \u2018Beto Show,\u2019 there\u2019s a breaking point between strategy and narcissism.\u201d<\/p>\n
Even on Saturday, while O\u2019Rourke was watching \u201cRunning with Beto,\u201d the documentary chronicling his closer-than-expected Texas Senate run last year, his campaign sent supporters an email instructing them to share their phone numbers and email addresses \u201cto be one of the first to hear the announcement\u201d about any campaign.<\/p>\n
Mingling in the crowd, O\u2019Rourke\u2019s family members said they still don\u2019t know what O\u2019Rourke plans to do.<\/p>\n
O\u2019Rourke has privately discussed using Austin, among other cities, as a headquarters for his presidential campaign. The city is easier to fly into and is closer to East Coast media and political centers than his hometown of El Paso, which is one time zone and more than 500 miles to the west. And with the South by Southwest music, technology and film festival underway, the city this weekend was playing host to thousands of young, internet-connected progressives that Democratic presidential candidates covet.<\/p>\n
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, former San Antonio Mayor Juli\u00e1n Castro and South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg were all in town, appearing on stages across the city. So was Howard Schultz, the former Starbucks chief executive mulling a run as an independent.<\/p>\n
O\u2019Rourke is widely expected to announce his campaign soon. And if he is running, there are some practical reasons to delay.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe benign explanation is he wants to have his ducks in a row, and running for president is hard and requires an immense amount of planning and he doesn\u2019t want to do it willy nilly and make mistakes right out of the gate the way a lot of candidates do,\u201d said Matt Bennett of the center-left group Third Way, who worked on the presidential campaigns of Bill Clinton and Wesley Clark. \u201cAnd if that\u2019s the case, then good for him.\u201d<\/p>\n
But waiting does not come without risk, including the possibility that the euphoria surrounding his Senate campaign may subside. Numerous Democratic activists, donors and high-profile politicians from across the country have complained privately that their calls to O\u2019Rourke\u2019s advisers still go unreturned.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn Iowa, there\u2019s a bunch of elected officials and county chairs and party chairs and activists and donors and staff that you would be talking to,\u201d said Sean Bagniewski, chairman of the Polk County Democrats. \u201cAnd I still don\u2019t know anybody that he\u2019s talked to in state.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bagniewski added, \u201cI think there was a really good window after the 2018 election where people were craving star power\u201d but that with other Democratic contenders campaigning, \u201cnow they\u2019re seeing there are legitimate stars in the Democratic field right now.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hank Sheinkopf, a longtime Democratic strategist based in New York, called O\u2019Rourke\u2019s demurrals \u201cgood media theater.\u201d But he said, \u201cIt\u2019s lousy politics \u2026 Your supporters are going to dissipate.\u201d<\/p>\n
In Austin on Saturday, there were few signs of O\u2019Rourke\u2019s star dimming. Appearing in a liberal oasis in this heavily Republican state, the former congressman was met by supporters wearing old \u201cBeto for Senate\u201d T-shirts. And with nearly a year before the Iowa caucuses, it is possible O\u2019Rourke\u2019s dithering will soon be forgotten by an electorate that is not yet following every machination of the 2020 campaign.<\/p>\n
Inside the theater, viewers saw an intimate, overwhelmingly favorable portrayal of the candidate. And when the prospect of a 2020 run was raised in the documentary, the audience cheered.<\/p>\n
Yet there was one potentially foretelling moment of frustration, too. At one point in the film, O\u2019Rourke is seen admonishing an aide, \u201cYou\u2019ve got to keep us on a better schedule.\u201d<\/p>\n