Beto O’Rourke holds talks with Obama as he considers running against Trump in 2020 presidential election

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Beto O’Rourke, the Democratic congressman who nearly won Ted Cruz’s Texas Senate seat, has reportedly met with Barack Obama, fuelling speculation that he is considering a 2020 presidential run.

The politician shot to national prominence during his vibrant campaign during the recent midterm elections and many have tipped him as a potential candidate for the White House.

The congressman sat down with the former president in Washington last month, The Washington Post reported.

Neither camp has commented on the reports, but speculation around Mr O’Rourke’s political plans are likely to grow stronger.

At a town hall meeting in his district of El Paso last week, the congressman said he was weighing up a run in 2020 but still needed to talk the idea over with his family.

When he was trying to unseat Mr Cruz, a former Republican candidate for the presidency who was ultimately defeated by Donald Trump, Mr O’Rourke said he would not consider running for the White House.

But after his narrow defeat in the midterm elections last month, he told reporters he was no longer ruling anything out.

Mr Obama has been meeting with many leading figures in the Democratic Party in recent weeks, including others rumoured to be considering a presidential bid such as Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders.

In a recent podcast, the former president said Mr O’Rourke reminded him of himself.

“The reason I was able to make a connection with a sizeable portion of the country was because people had a sense that I said what I meant,” Mr Obama said, adding that his race “didn’t feel constantly poll-tested. It felt as if he based his statements and his positions on what he believed”.

The congressman, who finished just 2.6 percentage points behind Mr Cruz in a state which has not elected a Democrat senator since 1988, turned down Mr Obama’s offers of help and endorsement during his midterm campaign.

Even as Mr O’Rourke’s race hit the international spotlight he insisted the election was up to Texans alone.

In 2012, when he was running for the House of Representatives nomination against the eight-term incumbent Democrat Silvestre Reyes, Mr Obama and other party heavyweights such as Bill Clinton backed his rival.

But now politicians across the United States are looking to the 2020 election, Mr O’Rourke seems to be more interested in garnering support from across his party.

The charismatic 46-year-old has already been publicly backed, should he run for president, by a number of Obama White House officials and aides, who say he reminds them of their old boss.

Among the other contenders who are looking likely to make a bid for the presidency are Ms Warren, Mr Obama’s vice-president Joe Biden, California senator Kamala Harris, and Hillary Clinton’s opponent in the 2016 primary, Mr Sanders.