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| Democrat Beto O'Rourke ends presidential bid | Democrat Beto O'Rourke ends presidential bid |
| (32 minutes later) | |
| US Democratic presidential hopeful Beto O'Rourke has announced he is ending his campaign. | |
| The former Texas congressman tweeted: "Our campaign has always been about seeing clearly, speaking honestly, and acting decisively. | |
| "In that spirit: I am announcing that my service to the country will not be as a candidate or as the nominee." | |
| Mr O'Rourke ran for president in March after losing his 2018 bid to oust Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz. | |
| In that Senate race, he did better than any Democrat had in Texas for decades, running a campaign that invigorated the party nationwide and drew comparisons with former President Barack Obama. | |
| His passionate delivery along with his good looks and background as a skateboarder and a punk rocker endeared him to liberals across the country. | |
| But Mr O'Rourke struggled to carry that energy into a White House race crowded with more than 20 Democratic candidates. | |
| As the initial buzz over his campaign began to subside, Mr O'Rourke, 47, tried to reboot his candidacy. He began to focus on gun control after a mass shooting in August in his hometown of El Paso, Texas. He vowed to remove assault-style weapons from private ownership, saying in one televised debate: "Hell yes, we're going to take your AR-15's." | |
| In a blog post announcing the end of his presidency, Mr O'Rouke said: "It is in the best interests of this party as we seek to unify around a nominee; and it is in the best interests of the country." | |
| He also took a parting shot at President Donald Trump. "We confronted institutional, systemic racism and called out Donald Trump for his white supremacy and the violence that he's encouraged against communities that don't look like, pray like or love like the majority in this country," his statement said. | |
| Who is Beto O'Rourke? | |
| Mr O'Rourke represented Texas' 16th congressional district for three terms before running unsuccessfully last year for the US Senate. He travelled to all of Texas' 254 counties during his Senate campaign, documenting his journey on social media, and broke Senate fundraising records by amassing more than $80m. | |
| He lives with his wife, Amy Hoover Sanders and three children in El Paso. He has an estimated net worth of nearly $9m (£6.7m). His first name is actually Robert, but he is known by his nickname Beto - a common contraction of Roberto, which he says he picked up as a child in El Paso. | |
| Following his November Senate defeat, Mr O'Rourke drew criticism for embarking on a road trip across the south-western US, during which he documented his travels in a blog and admitted he was stuck in a "funk". | |
| Even supporters questioned why Mr O'Rourke was on the road, leaving his wife at home to look after their children, while other Democratic contenders were assembling staff and funding. | |
| As he launched his campaign, he posed on the cover of Vanity Fair, telling the magazine about the White House race: "Man, I'm just born to be in it." | |
| He later said he regretted that move because it reinforced a "perception of privilege." | |
| After Mr O'Rourke dropped out on Friday, President Trump, a Republican, mocked him in a tweet. |