Former Rep. Beto O’Rourke, D-Texas, entered the race for his party’s 2020 presidential nomination Thursday with a direct-to-camera video.

O’Rourke makes his first visit to Iowa Thursday and will be making stops throughout the state through the weekend.

O’Rourke galvanized Democratic voters in his run for U.S. Senate in 2018 against incumbent Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, raising more than $80 million and losing by only 3 percent — the closest a Democrat has come to winning a Senate seat in Texas since 1988.

During his senate campaign, O’Rourke received national attention for a video clip of him defending the rights of NFL players to protest police brutality and racism by kneeling during the playing of the National Anthem before games.

“I can think of nothing more American than to peacefully stand up, or take a knee, for your rights, anytime, anywhere, in any place,” O’Rourke said at the time.

The field of Democratic candidates already includes multiple senators and governors, many of whom have more experience in elected office than the three-term congressman from El Paso. However, O’Rourke has a potential advantage in his email fundraising list, which he used during his Senate campaign to raise $38 million in the third quarter of 2018 — the most a senate campaign raised in one quarter in history.

Early polling of a matchup between O’Rourke and President Donald Trump in O’Rourke’s home state of Texas suggests the race would be essentially tied — the first time Texas would potentially be competitive in a presidential election since President Bill Clinton won re-election in 1996 and lost Texas by under 5 percent.

A Democrat winning Texas could potentially upend the electoral map. If 2016 Democratic party nominee Hillary Clinton carried Texas’ 38 electoral votes alongside all of her other pledged electors, she would have won the electoral college and thus the presidency.