O'Rourke weighing possible Iowa trip ahead of 2020 announcement: report

[brooklynite]

The Hill

Former Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-Texas) is looking at a possible trip to Iowa as he weighs a 2020 presidential run.

The El Paso Democrat’s team has been in talks with the campaign of Eric Giddens, a Democrat running in a state Senate special election, for O’Rourke to canvass for the candidate this weekend, according to a CNN report.

O’Rourke and his team have also been putting together a video boosting Giddens’s campaign, CNN reported.

A report from The New York Times on Monday also noted that an Iowa visit by O’Rourke could come as early as this week.

[SharonClark]

1. From Iowa Starting Line...

Beto O’Rourke is moving ever closer to an official presidential campaign launch, and he now has a top Iowa political operative to steer his efforts here. CNN reported that Norm Sterzenbach has been assisting O’Rourke’s initial Iowa outreach here, something Starting Line’s sources also confirmed.

It’s a major pickup for O’Rourke, a likely 2020 candidate who doesn’t have many Iowa connections or any previous trips to the state racked up (he was obviously busy with his senate race in 2018). Sterzenbach is a top Iowa campaign consultant and past executive director of the Iowa Democratic Party. Few others in the state know the caucus process, rules, and strategies better than him. Sterzenbach had been working with the IDP on their Iowa Caucus planning, but the IDP confirmed to Starting Line that they parted ways once he began working with O’Rourke.

As the New York Times wrote earlier today, part of Barack Obama’s original national team from his 2008 run is closely advising O’Rourke, seeing a new version of the inspiring upstart who rode an Iowa Caucus win into the White House. Sterzebach has another connection, however, to O’Rourke: a shared love of skateboarding. One of O’Rourke’s viral moments from his 2018 race was him skateboarding at a Whataburger; Sterzenbach is helping lead the effort to build a large new skatepark in Des Moines.