Despite everyman image, O’Rourke is even wealthier than Cruz

AUSTIN, Texas — With an unassuming air and a black Toyota Tundra he says was “the first new vehicle I’ve ever purchased,” Beto O’Rourke has campaigned thousands of miles across Texas and risen to national prominence on a workaday image that aligns with his politics, but not his personal finances. A graduate of a posh Virginia boarding school, O’Rourke and his friend Cedric Bixler-Zavala helped form Foss, an El Paso punk group that toured the country in a station wagon dubbed the “Lumber Wagon.” O’Rourke later quit to get a degree in English literature at Columbia University, thanks, he says, to loans, grants and work-study jobs. O’Rourke’s father in law is Bill Sanders, an El Paso developer whom The New York Times once described as a “white-haired grandee of the Texas borderland” and “one of the most influential figures in a region ruled by mercantile interests.” Many O’Rourke supporters haven’t heard about his well-to-do background, though some say it’s no deal-breaker. “He’s the people’s person.” O’Rourke’s father, Pat, spent eight-plus years as county commissioner and county judge and was so angry about then-relaxed federal immigration policies that in 1986 he sent President Ronald Reagan a bill for $7.5 million that he said the El Paso county hospital spent treating “undocumented aliens” pouring over the nearby border with Mexico. “There’s a warm feeling in this community for his parents,” Byrd said, “but there wasn’t any political infrastructure around him that would have made it easier than for anybody else.” After his father’s death in 2001, O’Rourke became co-owner of the Imperial Arms, an 18-unit El Paso apartment complex valued in financial disclosure records at up to $5 million.