Gov. Greg Abbott has flagged Beto O’Rourke as a threat to the Texas economy – Beto “job-killing socialist” O’Rourke. To retaliate, O’Rourke has played up his background as a small-business owner.
On his campaign trail, the former El Paso congressman has begun to describe his journey as a co-founder of Stanton Street Technology Group. An El Paso web-design company founded in 1999 and owned by O’Rourke for over a decade.
“So Greg Abbott and Beto O’Rourke — only one of them has started a small business and met a payroll every single week for 15 years,” O’Rourke says in a new digital ad.
Abbott has stated O’Rourke would be disastrous for Texas’ economy.
“From raising corporate taxes to creating a European-style labor market that kills jobs, extreme liberal Beto O’Rourke’s policies would destroy the Texas Miracle,” Abbott campaign spokesperson Mark Miner said in a recent statement.
With his new campaign strategy, O’Rourke is hoping he shows voters the contrast in the background of the two candidates. Pointing out Abbott has always been on the public payroll.
“This guy has been on the public payroll — nothing wrong with that — but if there’s someone who knows what capitalism is and understands the power of the market and creating jobs and how critical those jobs are to communities like Vernon, like my hometown of El Paso, I’m the guy,” O’Rourke said, Thursday at a campaign stop in Vernon, as reported by The Texas Tribune.
He started his company amidst the dot-com boom in 1999 and owned it until he left for Congress in 2013, according to his campaign. O’Rourkes wife, Amy O’Rourke took ownership and then in 2017, sold the company to its CEO Brian Wancho, around the time her husband began his U.S. Senate campaign.
