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A new political attack ad targets Beto O'Rourke by negatively contrasting the El Paso Democrat's "white male privilege" with former President Barack Obama.
The two-minute-long ad titled "Pedigree" by the conservative Club for Growth will run in Iowa on television and digital media.
The ad suggests O'Rourke "shows a lifelong pattern revealing an indelible sense of entitlement."
The ad claims O'Rourke, who has Irish and Welsh ancestry, benefits from being wealthy and not being a woman or a minority.
Here is a fact check on some of the ad's claims:
More:Losing Texas Senate: Beto O'Rourke gain and fate of Democrats since 1996, but why?
'Born with a blue-blood pedigree'
True. The ad states that O'Rourke was "born with a blue-blood pedigree" and that he has a wealthy father-in-law who has backed him.
O'Rourke's father, Patrick "Pat" Francis O'Rourke, was an El Paso County judge, which is similar to being the mayor of a county in Texas. O'Rourke's mother owned three furniture stores.
More:Who are Beto O'Rourke's wife, children, parents and in-laws?
More:Beto O'Rourke responds to Ted Cruz attack on 'mom's tax fraud,' says he's proud of his mom
O'Rourke's wife, Amy, is the daughter of William "Bill" Sanders, a real-estate mogul whose net worth was estimated at about $500 million by Forbes magazine.
O’Rourke and his wife list assets that could range from $3.5 million to a more than $16 million, the Texas Tribune reported.
'Bulldoze a poor Hispanic neighborhood'
Misleading. The ad mentions a Downtown redevelopment controversy when O'Rourke was on the El Paso City Council in the early 2000s.
The ad claims O'Rourke wanted to "bulldoze a poor Hispanic neighborhood, while enriching developers like his father-in-law."
The Club for Growth and Ted Cruz ran similar attack ads during O'Rourke's run for Senate in 2018.
The ads were "misleading" and out of context, according to Stuart Blaugrund, a Dallas-based lawyer who filed a pair of ethics complaints against O'Rourke in 2006.
O'Rourke abstained on key votes, and the ethics complaints were ultimately dismissed. The neighborhood, named the Segundo Barrio, still stands.
More:Beto 2020: O'Rourke school, history in politics, career
'Large breasts and tight buttocks'
Mostly true. The ad claims O'Rourke cast "aspersions on working women whose, quote, 'only qualifications seem to be … large breasts and tight buttocks.' "
The quote was about actresses in "The Will Rogers Follies" from a 1991 review of the musical that O'Rourke wrote for the Columbia University student newspaper when he was 19 years old. He didn't like the play.
"I am ashamed of what I wrote and I apologize," O'Rourke said in 2018. "There is no excuse for making disrespectful and demeaning comments about women."
True. O'Rourke was arrested on a driving-while-intoxicated charge when he was 26 in 1998.
The charged was dismissed in 1999 after he completed a court-recommended DWI program. The DWI issue first surfaced when he ran for office in 2005.
More:Beto DWI, burglary charges stem from 1990s incidents, came up in past campaigns
The ad states that O'Rourke lives a "charmed life" and has gotten away with "behavior a woman or a person of color could never get away with."
O'Rourke has spoken about disparities in the U.S. justice system, including expressing support for the NFL players kneeling in protest over the slayings of unarmed African-Americans by police, and a long-established call for the legalization of marijuana.
Daniel Borunda may be reached at 546-6102; dborunda@elpasotimes; @BorundaDaniel on Twitter.
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