As midterm election season kicks into high gear, one of the state contests that has attracted the national spotlight is the race for U.S. Senate from Texas. One of the names that has surfaced in conjunction with the race is Amy Hoover Sanders.
Who is Amy Hoover Sanders?
Amy Hoover Sanders is the wife of Beto O’Rourke, the four-term Democratic U.S. Congressman from El Paso, Texas, who is running to unseat Sen. Ted Cruz. O’Rourke’s national profile recently skyrocketed when his campaign posted a viral video in which O’Rourke answered a hostile question on the campaign trail. Asked whether he considered NFL players kneeling during the National Anthem to be disrespectful, O’Rourke said he “can think of nothing more American” and spoke at length about institutionalized racism. It’s racked up more than 44 million views.
Sanders has been highly visible on the campaign trail and is often photographed with O’Rourke at events. Today, Sanders works in education as the director of education development for La Fe Community Development Corporation and executive director of La Fe Preparatory school, which she co-founded. She has previously served as president of Stanton Street, a company that builds websites that O’Rourke founded in El Paso in 1999. O’Rourke said his wife was reluctant when he first considered running for Congress, but after Trump was elected, she nudged him to run for Senate.
Both O’Rourke, 44, and Sanders, 35, grew up in El Paso but didn’t meet until they were set up on a blind date in 2004. O’Rourke asked Sanders to a bar across the Mexican border which claims to have invented the margarita. As they were leaving, they were approached by a TV crew asking them to kiss on camera for a commercial. “Es mi hermana,” he told them: She’s my sister. The couple were married ten months later. They have three children: Ulysses, 11, Molly, 10, and Henry, 7.
Sanders went to Williams College, then spent a year teaching in Guatemala before returning to her hometown. She’s a member of one of El Paso’s most influential families: Her father, William Sanders, is a businessman turned real-estate mogul who is profiled in the book “The Richest Man in Town.” He founded Security Capital, one of the most successful real estate investment trust businesses in the country, which he recently sold to GE for more than $2 billion.
