O’Rourke to decide on 2020 bid by end of February

Beto O’Rourke said Tuesday that he will decide whether to run for president before the end of February, according to reporters present for an interview taping in New York.

His remarks, in a highly anticipated interview with Oprah Winfrey, come as O’Rourke edges closer to a presidential campaign. The former Texas congressman declined to definitively say if he will run for president, citing family considerations . He had previously said he had no timetable for deciding on a run.

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Asked Tuesday about his timing, O’Rourke said “The serious answer is really soon. Before the end of this month,” according to reporters from the Washington Post and Texas Tribune.

O’Rourke has slipped back slightly in some 2020 polls from the highs he registered just after his closer-than-expected Texas Senate race against Republican Ted Cruz. But he would still enter the Democratic primary in the top tier.

The interview was taken by O’Rourke’s supporters as another sign of his increasingly likely presidential bid.

Jay Surdukowski, a New Hampshire Democratic activist who hosted a “Draft Beto” event at his home recently, said he was “elated about the signals Beto is sending tonight.”

Surdukowski, who co-chaired Martin O’Malley’s 2016 presidential campaign in New Hampshire, said he is “willing to get on a plane to Texas ASAP to talk New Hampshire primary.”

The Oprah interview, while not airing until Feb. 16, offered O’Rourke a large stage on which re-introduce himself to Democratic voters. Before appearing at Winfrey’s “Oprah’s SuperSoul Conversations from Times Square” event, O’Rourke had kept a relatively low profile, traveling throughout the Southwest on a solo road trip and making appearances with little or no advance notice.

Late last month, O’Rourke told POLITICO that he has no timetable for making a decision about 2020, a process that he said could “potentially” take months. Private conversations that his former advisers have been having with campaign operatives about a potential 2020 campaign, he said, are not being conducted at his direction.

In an appearance at Columbia College, his alma mater, on Monday, a Texas Tribune reporter tweeted that O’Rourke called President Donald Trump’s proposed border wall “fucking ludicrous,” praised Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and lamented the mean-spiritedness of much of the content he finds on Twitter.

Winfrey herself was the subject of presidential speculation last year, after a politically-charged Golden Globes speech that drew widespread attention. She has said she has no interest in running.