Former U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-Texas) expressed support Friday for a campaign asking Democratic voters unhappy with President Joe Biden’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war to vote “uncommitted” in Michigan’s Democratic presidential primary on Tuesday.
“I do think it makes sense for those who want to see this administration do more, or do a better job, to exert that political pressure and get the president’s attention and the attention of those on his campaign so that the United States does better,” O’Rourke said in a Friday interview with the Michigan Advance.
O’Rourke, who unsuccessfully ran for president in 2020 and later endorsed Biden, will visit northern Michigan on Saturday as part of a book tour.
O’Rourke said he read an opinion piece by Dearborn Mayor Abdullah Hammoud endorsing the campaign that was published in the New York Times this week, which he said was “well-written and well-argued.” The campaign has also been endorsed by U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Detroit) and former U.S. Rep. Andy Levin (D-Bloomfield Twp.).
“I agree with the aims and the goals. We should have a ceasefire, there should be a return of each [and] every single one of those hostages [taken by Hamas], there should be an end to this war and there should be a negotiated solution to Palestinian statehood,” O’Rourke said. “All of that needs to happen, and I share the concern that the United States is not doing close to enough to bring those things to pass.”
The campaign is not without precedent, O’Rourke said.
When Martin Luther King, Jr., and Andrew Young first approached President Lyndon B. Johnson about passing the Voting Rights Act of 1965, O’Rourke said, the president told them he didn’t have the political power to get it passed.
King and Young spent the weeks and months that followed organizing to get Johnson that mandate.
“It culminates in John Lewis leading that march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in March of 1965, almost being beaten to death in the process, and really galvanizing the conscience of the country. Within eight days, Johnson convenes a joint session of Congress, and by that summer has passed and signed into law the Voting Rights Act of 1965,” O’Rourke said. “I know that Joe Biden is a good man. I know that he wants to do the right thing. Sometimes political pressure helps a president get there, and that may be what’s needed now.”
O’Rourke is currently on a nationwide book tour to promote his book, “We’ve Got to Try: How the Fight for Voting Rights Makes Everything Else Possible.”
“This whole book is about democracy and the whole book tour is about talking about how we exercise our political rights to get to the outcome that we so badly want,” O’Rourke said. “I don’t want to second guess this peaceful, nonviolent protest to really try to change the direction that this country is pursuing when it comes to this war in Gaza.”
When he was growing up, O’Rourke says, he had a family friend near Petoskey who his family would often visit. He said this will be his first trip back to Petoskey in 35 years.
The war began after the militant group Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, killing more than 1,200 Israelis and taking 253 hostages, including Americans. Since then, the death toll has topped 29,000, with more than 67,000 injured, per Gaza’s Hamas-controlled health ministry.
Biden said last week that he has had “extensive conversations” with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in which he urged Netanyahu to seek a ceasefire with Hamas to allow the release of hostages held by the militant group. Biden said he did not anticipate Israel would launch “any massive land invasion in the meantime.”
Senior Biden officials traveled to Southeast Michigan earlier this month to talk with Arab-American and Muslim leaders about their concerns about the conflict.
“The ways in which people have been speaking out, the ways in which they’re using the political [clout] that they have, it’s taking longer than we want it to, but it’s clear that the administration is beginning to pay attention to it,” O’Rourke said.
Almost every issue – from the war in Gaza to reproductive rights – can be connected back to the health of American democracy and voting rights, O’Rourke said.
While O’Rourke said it is easy to feel helpless when presented with such expansive issues and the speed with which progress is made, his book highlights stories that show how individual action can lead to change, such as that of Lawrence Nixon, who fought against Texas’ white primary for 20 years before ultimately toppling it. That fight later inspired Johnson to sign the Voting Rights Act in 1965, O’Rourke said.
“There is a real temptation to despair and to give in or to give up or to come to the conclusion that nothing any one of us does individually is going to make enough of a difference,” O’Rourke said. “When you think about [Nixon], you realize that the actions of a person do make a huge difference. But to expect that we will see the outcome we want in a year, or a given election cycle, is to deny the length that this struggle will require.”
But O’Rourke recognizes that voters may become desensitized if every election is sold as the most important election of their lives, with action on key issues presented as being on the ballot even when their political party of choice already holds the levers of power.
“We sometimes think that everything literally hinges on just one election or just one person. If you do that again and again and again, it is absolutely exhausting, and if everything’s important, then nothing is,” O’Rourke said.
“We have to be in this fight, we have to be in it for life and we have to remember that even when we win, these victories aren’t final, they can be taken away from us. These hard-won rights and freedoms will only be protected if we’re willing to do the work, and so it’s on all of us,” O’Rourke said. “That’s the price you pay for living in a democracy.”
Michiganders are no strangers to sticking with something they believe in for long periods, O’Rourke said, mentioning the Detroit Lions’ first playoffs win in more than 30 years.
“I don’t watch a lot of professional sports and couldn’t have told you what teams were likely to be in the Super Bowl, but as the field narrowed and folks were talking about Detroit, that definitely got my interest and my attention,” O’Rourke said. “Listen, I’m a Democrat in Texas. Inherently, I’m always for the underdog. And just from my brief time in Michigan over the years, I also had a sense of what that would mean for the state.”
While O’Rourke said voters should make their voices heard, he criticized the Democratic Party’s strategy of promoting candidates in Republican primaries who they view as easier to beat in the general election.
“I understand, in the short term, the gain that it might produce. But over the long term, it is adding fuel to the fire of election denial, of extremism of those who are trying to tilt the country towards autocratic leaders or even fascism. I really think that it’s beneath us as a party,” O’Rourke said. “We can’t on the one hand stand for free and fair elections, and to encourage the concept of candidates and ideas, and on the other hand be tipping the scale in favor of people with whom we fundamentally disagree with and who themselves fundamentally disagree with our form of government.”
Democrats used the strategy in Michigan’s 3rd Congressional District in 2022, where Republican nominee John Gibbs defeated former U.S. Rep. Peter Meijer (R-Grand Rapids), who voted to impeach former President Donald Trump for trying to overturn the 2020 election.
While U.S. Rep. Hillary Scholten (D-Grand Rapids) was able to beat Gibbs in the general election, O’Rourke said the strategy could have backfired had she lost.
“In Meijer’s case, here’s somebody who, though I don’t agree with him on every issue, is trying to do the right thing, as far as I can tell, for the people he served, for his country, and took a very courageous and, within his party, politically unpopular stance,” O’Rourke said. “I think that should be honored. That doesn’t mean you don’t try to beat him, but you do that by fielding the best Democratic candidate and doing everything you can to persuade the voters who are going to decide the outcome of that election. You don’t get involved in the other party’s primary.”
Meijer is now running as a Republican for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Lansing) and he has said he will vote for Trump if he’s the 2024 GOP nominee.
While O’Rourke voiced support for the uncommitted campaign in the Democratic primary, he said he would be open to campaigning for Biden in the general election, once his book tour ends. Short of that, O’Rourke said he will be working on voter registration in Texas “and doing our best within the environment of voter suppression and voter intimidation to help people get on the rolls, and then help those who are on the rolls to actually cast a ballot.”
“I support the president; I want him very badly to beat Donald Trump,” O’Rourke said. “I don’t want to do anything that weakens his ability to do that, because for whatever legitimate concerns people have about President Biden’s response to the war in Gaza, we do know for a fact that, under President Trump, it would be much worse. And so, yes, let’s help him, let’s push him, let’s apply pressure where we can, but let us in no way undermine his ability to win in November.”
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