Beto O'Rourke did not go to his high school prom, the failed Senate candidate has revealed.
O'Rourke, who went by his given name Robert while attending the prestigious all-male Woodberry Forest school in Virginia, was asked to prom by a teenage supporter during a recent campaign stop in Iowa.
"It’s OK if you say no, but will you go to prom with me?" asked Claire Campbell, 17, at the rally in Sioux City on Thursday. O'Rourke didn't accept the invitation, but said he appreciated the gesture. He went on to explain why it was so meaningful to him.
"As someone who did not go to prom because no one asked me, I’m really touched," O'Rourke responded. "This means more to me than you know." He then offered the teen a "counter-proposal" in lieu of the prom invite.
"Will you caucus for me?" he said. And the crowd went wild.
Someone just asked Democratic candidate for president Beto O’Rourke to prom. Flattered, he asked, 'would you Caucus for me?" @FoxNewsMMR pic.twitter.com/zoKYyeCvgN
— Mitti Hicks (@MittiMegan) April 4, 2019
Robert O'Rourke's high school year book page reveals an angsty teen heavily influenced by emo and punk rock music. O'Rourke posted lyrics from "Hidden Wheel," a song by one of his favorite bands, Rites of Spring, about being an "angry son." According to the New York Times, the El Paso native opted to attended boarding school in Virginia "largely to create some distance from his father, a political obsessive who did not understand his son’s musical leanings."
It is unclear to what extent this teen angst, and his failure to secure a prom invite before the age of 46, has influenced Beto's life and career trajectory. After graduating from Columbia University in the mid-1990s, he was "a little bit of sad case" who spent his nights alone listening to cassettes and pondering the meaning of life.
O'Rourke eventually settled in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, where he shared a run-down loft with other "creative types," and smoked copious amounts of marijuana. He found work as a male nanny for a wealthy family on the Upper West Side. Friends describe him as a "weirdo musician" who "liked to drink beer" and wasn't particularly interested in politics at the time.
Shortly after fleeing New York City, and returning to Texas, O'Rourke was arrested for driving while intoxicated.
UPDATE: "Kinda sad."
I tracked down the young woman who just asked Beto to prom and asked how she felt about his answer. 'Kinda sad," she tells me. Asked what she thought about his counter offer to caucus for him, she tells me she lives in South Dakota. pic.twitter.com/sakpYPai4A
— DJ Judd (@DJJudd) April 4, 2019