The Beto Odyssey

It is not yet clear whether Beto O’Rourke is running for president. What is clear, however, is that in the course of making his decision, he has been going for a lot of runs. Head-clearing runs. Meaningful runs. In November—just after O’Rourke lost, by a slim margin, the U.S. Senate campaign he had waged against Ted Cruz in Texas—Beto shared the details of a jog he took during a morning snowfall in Washington, D.C. “I was concerned that I might slip, that the ground would be too slick,” the politician wrote, “but it was wet and grainy enough that traction wasn’t a problem. Cold but not too cold.” Later: “The sleet stinging my face, I wondered if the winds had changed too.”

Posts of this manner continued as Beto embarked on , Texas to Kansas to Colorado to New Mexico, meeting new people—finding new meaning—along the way. He narrated the journey in a style of an event at Pueblo Community College. “Something so raw and honest that you want to hold on to it, remember every word … a flow between people.”