Surprisingly the New York Times did an expose on Beto with just a week before the big vote, exposing his corruption from over a decade ago.
Here’s a good summary:
DC EXAMINER – O’Rourke, who served on the El Paso City Council last decade, voted for a proposal to redevelop downtown El Paso with restaurants, shops, and an arts walk that would rival the River Walk in downtown San Antonio. But this involved replacing tenements and abandoned, boarded-up buildings in the process.
The billionaire real estate investor who proposed the plan just happened to be O’Rourke’s father-in-law, William Sanders.
As the Times reports, O’Rourke defended the plan before angry residents and voted to advance it. However, O’Rourke made a show of voting against a motion to invoke eminent domain, a sign that he knew what he was doing was wrong.
Ultimately, the plan to redevelop the downtown area fell through. But many residents were left with a bad taste in their mouth. While it was still up for debate, many feared they would be displaced, losing their homes through eminent domain, thanks to what they viewed as coordinated action between O’Rourke and his father-in-law.
Guadalupe Ochoa, a 75-year-old El Paso resident, told the Times through an interpreter that she had voted for O’Rourke, but “now that he got to the top, and close to the power, he turned things around on us.”
Regarding his voting around the issue of eminent domain, the Times writes:
Mr. O’Rourke abstained from votes establishing a tax zone that would set the stage for eminent domain and voted for a temporary moratorium; he later voted against an effort to limit its use.
They say the plan eventually fell through. But the NY Times writes…
…The plan was eventually abandoned, partly because of a state ballot initiative in 2009 prohibiting the use of eminent domain to take property for private use.
The Times also adds…
Mr. O’Rourke declined requests to be interviewed for this article. In response to claims that he favored developers over barrio residents, he has said in the past that he never voted for eminent domain, that no property was ever taken by the city through eminent domain and that he had no financial interest in the project.
So much for Beto being on the side of the little people. At least back then, he was just a puppet for his father-in-law, And I’m betting if he’d gotten this redevelopment to go through, he’d have made a lot of money.
You can read the full article here.