Former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke told voters in South Carolina on Friday that it is time to end the cash bail system, arguing that it discriminates against the less fortunate.
Trying to spin his past run-ins with the law into a positive message on the campaign trail, the 2020 Democratic presidential candidate said when he got arrested on a couple of occasions over 20 years ago that his family had the financial means to get him out of jail, but many others do not.
“Ending the cash bail system makes sense,” Mr. O’Rourke said in Rock Hill. “You cannot be too poor to have your freedom and that is exactly what happens in the United States of America.”
Mr. O’Rourke was arrested in 1998 for drunken driving and in 1995 for burglary when he was a student at The University of Texas at El Paso, according to Politifact Texas, which says the DWI charge was dismissed after he went through a DWI program and the misdemeanor charge of burglary was disposed of the following year.
Mr. O’Rourke told the audience that he was able to get his life back on track, but others have struggled to recover from arrests from nonviolent offenses, which have hurt their ability to secure employment and qualify for student loans.
“In both instances I was arrested, in both instances I spent a night in county jail, and in both instances I was able to post bail because we had the resources in our family to do that,” Mr. O’Rourke said. “I understand how exceptional my experience was, and the fact that these mistakes didn’t define me, or my future, or my options over the course of my lifetime.”
• Seth McLaughlin can be reached at smclaughlin@washingtontimes.com.
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