This viral photo of Beto O’Rourke and Ted Cruz is the optimistic moment America needed.
The race between Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-TX) and Ted Cruz (R-TX) was one of the most closely watched during the 2018 midterm elections.
For half the country, Beto personified the hope and change of moving beyond President Trump’s 2016 election while for the other half, Cruz is a conservative stalwart and someone beloved on the right. It briefly seemed like Beto had a shot at beating Cruz but the seat ultimately stayed in Republican hands.
Like most of our divided nation, it was safe to assume Cruz and O’Rourke would retreat back into their respective ideological corners.
But it turns out that all it took to bring them together was one college student in a crowded airport.
Student Tiffany Easter spotted both men waiting for a flight back to Washington, DC and noticed they were not only in the same area but were having a civil conversation about America’s future.
“It was the first time they had seen each other since the election, and the entire conversation was both of them talking about how they could move forward together,” Easter wrote on her Facebook page.
She then asked both men to pose for a photo together, which they readily agreed to.
“Today, we literally watched them come together,” Easter wrote. “This is America. This is good. This is wholesome. This is why I love and do what I do.”
Even though O’Rourke lost his election bid against Cruz, that hasn’t stopped a growing chorus of supporters from hoping that he will run for higher office, all the way to the White House in 2020. And O’Rourke did nothing to do diminish those calls with a post to Medium on Thursday that sounded an awful lot like someone thinking deeply about coming back to Washington in two short years.