(10-28-2018 04:14 PM)tanqtonic Wrote:  

(10-28-2018 03:46 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  

(10-28-2018 03:17 PM)tanqtonic Wrote:  I dont think Lad is influenced by first hand knowledge #s. He has his picture and he is sticking to it. I think there might be an altar placed around it soon.

Well, you know the O'Rourkes, too. What do you think of my theory of how the name "Beto" came to be? And from what you're saying, I'm guessing that the name got put away for a while, until he actually starting his political career. Then how helpful could it be to have that childhood photo?

It could be that he was called 'Beto' in a small way by the family. Much like I was called 'Zete' (for reasons I cant fathom) from time to time in my family. But, everyone called him 'Bobbie'.
My best guess is that he did what many people do when he moved to college --- he wanted to build a persona. My guess is that he told roommates at Columbia about the weird as hell environment that El Paso is, told them about Fred's Bar and The Sub bars in J-town, the parties at Surfers, going bunny hunting in sandhills and watching the planes land in the desert, and how sometimes he was called Beto by the family.
And he got tagged with the name there. And when he came back, it stuck. I distinctly remembering coming back to El Paso in the '99 time frame and running into him and several others (the others I knew much, much better) and them referring to him as Beto at that point instead of the previous moniker.
And it helped immeasurably in getting elected to city council in El Paso (for some odd reason).
And no, I dont think the family planned on him being a politician. I knew a guy who dated Erin, and he stated to me that in the mid 90's - early 2000's Beto was kind of 'drifter'. Kind of the prototypical El Paso pol based son who went back East and just did a 'slacker' thing thing for awhile.
My family knew the Hoovers far better (his in-laws). I am pretty sure it was the in-laws that firmly implanted the pol bug into Baby O'Rourke. Old man Hoover was the type that was going to make sure both he, his siblings, and any siblings-in-laws were going to be 'connected' in that manner.
Yeah, Papa Pat was political through and through. But, I dont see the foresight or the smarts in Pat to have that much of a 30 year plan with the name. Pat was a pol, but, imo and in hindsight, kind of an amiable goofball type of pol. I think the Hoover connection was the real political rod in Baby O'Rourke's life. And, since his dad had already been County Commissioner for 12(?) years and County Judge for like about another 8-10, Baby O'Rourke already had the last name recognition that old man Hoover would salivate over.
I think the name Beto was a family artifact that got put onto a youngster away at college. Pat never came across as the Joseph P. Kennedy type to me.
But, I have been mistaken far more than once.

Your impressions are not totally inconsistent with mine. I actually know some of the uncles and cousins better, and they strike me as political to the nth degree. I only know Papa Pat by reputation.

I just find it odd that we just happen to have this photo of him in "Beto" t-shirt when he was like 4 or 5 or 6 or so, and then the name doesn't come up again for about 20 years.

But then, there's a lot I find odd about this whole situation, not the least of which is the way the Ted Cruz campaign has handled things. Maybe they just think that Texas is still so republican that you can run a Claytie Williams campaign and still win, as long as you don't say "relax and enjoy it" and refuse to shake Robert's hand. Claytie probably wins without those, although Texas has probably slid left some since then. Ponder what happens if Claytie had won. We probably elect Claytie to a second term as governor instead GWB in 1994, and who knows from there.

I sincerely hope that the Cruz campaign has really, really good polling and they know they are not in trouble. Here in the middle of the most republican county in the country, I see more "Beto" campaign signs than "Ted Cruz" ones, although the numbers have pretty much evened up in the last couple of weeks. But if Montgomery County is anywhere less than 60-40 or 65-35 Cruz (for reference it was 74-22 Trump in 2016, giving Trump his largest numerical margin in any county in the US), he may be in serious trouble. Maybe he is okay. When I voted the other day, the line was pretty long for my polling place (maybe 20 minutes, and I have voted in prior elections where the same song was still playing on the radio when I got back to the car), and I'm pretty sure everybody in that line was voting for Cruz, because the waiting in line discussions were quite frankly a little startling to me in terms of how open everyone was about their political beliefs.