Going through Republican assaults that he’s a risk to the Texas economic system, Beto O’Rourke is enjoying up part of his background that has gotten little consideration since he burst on the statewide scene: small-business proprietor.

With GOP Gov. Greg Abbott attacking O’Rourke as a job-killing socialist, the previous El Paso congressman has been more and more discussing the expertise on the marketing campaign path, and it’s the topic of his marketing campaign’s first vital paid media. O’Rourke co-founded Stanton Avenue Expertise Group, an El Paso web-design firm, in 1999, and owned it for over a decade.

“So Greg Abbott and Beto O’Rourke — solely one in every of them has began a small enterprise and met a payroll each single week for 15 years,” O’Rourke says in a brand new digital advert, a part of an preliminary $50,000 purchase that begins Wednesday.

Gov. Abbott hosts roundtable in Houston to speak Texas enterprise local weather

The economic system is a high challenge for Abbott, and he has argued O’Rourke can be disastrous given his assist for issues like a $15 minimal wage.

“From elevating company taxes to making a European-style labor market that kills jobs, excessive liberal Beto O’Rourke’s insurance policies would destroy the Texas Miracle,” Abbott marketing campaign spokesperson Mark Miner mentioned in a latest assertion.

O’Rourke has been campaigning on a plan by the Texas AFL-CIO to create greater than 1 million jobs within the renewable-energy trade. He recurrently emphasizes that the plan wouldn’t put fossil-fuel employees out of labor, trying to preempt GOP criticism that he’s a hazard to the state’s oil-and-gas economic system.

However past that, O’Rourke is hoping voters will take discover of a distinction within the backgrounds of the 2 candidates. He introduced it up throughout a marketing campaign cease Thursday in Vernon, a small city close to the Oklahoma border, the place an attendee requested him how supporters can fight GOP efforts to model O’Rourke as a socialist.

Greg Abbott, Beto O’Rourke to face off in race for Texas governor this November

Referring to Abbott, O’Rourke mentioned, “This man has been on the general public payroll — nothing flawed with that — but when there’s somebody who is aware of what capitalism is and understands the facility of the market and creating jobs and the way crucial these jobs are to communities like Vernon, like my hometown of El Paso, I’m the man.”

Abbott has held elected workplace for a lot of the previous three a long time, beginning as a district decide in Houston in 1993 and happening to function Texas Supreme Courtroom justice and legal professional normal earlier than turning into governor in 2015. O’Rourke first entered politics in 2005 as an El Paso Metropolis Council member.

O’Rourke didn’t speak a lot about his enterprise expertise in his 2018 and 2020 campaigns. It got here up in media reviews as he grew to become extra of a nationwide determine, however till now it has not prominently factored into his common pitch to voters exterior El Paso.

He began Stanton Avenue Expertise Group in 1999, amid the dot-com growth, and owned it till heading to Congress in 2013, in accordance with his marketing campaign. The corporate employed dozens of individuals over time.

O’Rourke helped begin the enterprise months after shifting residence to El Paso from New York, the place he had been doing odd jobs since graduating from Columbia College in 1995. His mother and father “lent him about $19,000 in start-up cash,” in accordance a 2019 New York Instances report, and he moved again in with them so he may dedicate as a lot cash as doable to the corporate, he mentioned.

Stanton Avenue Expertise Group constructed web sites for native companies and teams, together with e-commerce websites for these looking for clients exterior El Paso. By 2000, it had “about 20 shoppers” and was charging $10,000 to $50,000 for an e-commerce package deal, in accordance with the El Paso Instances.

O’Rourke used the corporate for an endeavor that was an even bigger ardour: an internet journal, StantonStreet.com. He mentioned its inspiration was his father, the late El Paso politician Pat O’Rourke, and he got down to present another voice to the native media. But it surely was short-lived, lasting solely 15 points and going bankrupt, as he would later recall on the marketing campaign path.

O’Rourke’s spouse, Amy O’Rourke, took possession of Stanton Avenue Expertise Group when he ran for Congress for the primary time, in accordance with the El Paso Instances. She offered the corporate to its CEO, Brian Wancho, in 2017, across the time her husband started his U.S. Senate marketing campaign.

Disclosure: El Paso Instances and The New York Instances have been monetary supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan information group that’s funded partially by donations from members, foundations and company sponsors. Monetary supporters play no function within the Tribune’s journalism. Discover a full listing of them right here. 

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