The Hill’s 2012 New Members Guide

Rep.-elect Beto O’Rourke (D-Texas-16)

DATE OF BIRTH: Sept. 26, 1972

BIRTHPLACE: El Paso, Texas

RESIDENCE: El Paso, Texas

OCCUPATION: Small-businessman 

EDUCATION: B.A., Columbia University 

PREVIOUS OFFICE HELD: El Paso City Council, 2005-2011

FAMILY: Wife, Amy; three children 

The Democrats held onto their seat in Texas’s 16th congressional district with Beto O’Rourke’s win over Republican Barbara Carrasco and Libertarian Junart Sodoy. 

O’Rourke, a fourth generation El Pasoan won the seat after unseating sitting Rep. Silvestre Reyes in the Democratic primary. 

But this won’t be his first political office; O’Rourke previously served two terms on El Paso’s city council, representing the eighth district. His father, Pat, a county commissioner and judge, switched parties and ran an unsuccessful campaign for Congress in 1996. 

Before being elected to the city council, O’Rourke graduated from Columbia University in 1995 with a B.A. in English and began working in the emerging field of Web and Internet technology in New York. In 1998, he moved back to El Paso and started his own company, Stanton Street Technology Group.