Former Cedric Bixler-Zavala Bandmate Running Against Ted Cruz

Democratic Texas congressman Beto O’Rourke is officially running for Ted Cruz’s Senate seat, as Spin points out. In the 1990s, O’Rourke was a singer and guitarist in the band Foss, which included Cedric Bixler-Zavala (At the Drive-In and The Mars Volta) on vocals and drums. “I wasn’t very good at it,” O’Rourke told the Washington Post earlier this year, explaining that his father didn’t fully back his musical aspirations either. “He won’t say it, but the expectation is: We didn’t take out loans for you to go to Columbia and then [play] in a punk band your whole life.”

O’Rourke, an underdog in the Senate race, is the “first prominent Democrat” to challenge Cruz for the Senate seat, according to the AP. In his campaign launch announcement earlier today, he promised to resist Donald Trump, saying he’d “fight when necessary against a president who is focused on building walls, or conducting military immigrant round-ups.”

via Noah Yoo