EL PASO, Texas (NewsNation Now) —Former Congressman and 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke said he may enter the race to unseat Texas Gov. Greg Abbott next year.

O’Rourke stated for the first time publicly that he’s considering a run for governor in 2022, during a radio interview on KLAQ’s “The Buzz Adams Morning Show” in El Paso Monday.

“You know what, it’s something I’m going to think about,” he said near the end of 15-minute interview.

O’Rourke suggested Gov. Abbott’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic may affect his own thinking about getting into the race.

“This state has suffered perhaps more than any other in the midst of this pandemic, in the midst of the worst recession since the Great Depression. It is particularly galling to me…that El Paso has in one of the hardest-hit states was, if not is, the hardest-hit city,” O’Rourke said.

“So many people dying so quickly that you set up 10 mobile morgues. You have to call in the National Guard to haul the dead bodies, and you have a complete indifference on the part of Gov. Greg Abbott to what local leadership, including our county judge, Judge Samaniego, are trying to do to literally save the lives of the people in our lives,” added O’Rourke.

O’Rourke, a Democrat, gained national attention when he narrowly lost the election to unseat Sen. Ted Cruz in 2018, finishing two percentage points behind the Republican incumbent. He also ran unsuccessfully for the Democratic presidential nomination and ended up endorsing President Joe Biden’s candidacy.

Texas State University confirmed O’Rourke would begin teaching a Texas politics class during the spring 2021 semester. The University of Texas at Austin also shared O’Rourke would teach a seminar at the LBJ School of Public Affairs.

O’Rourke echoed his earlier statements on Twitter Thursday after the interview.

“Whether or not I run, I will do everything in my power to elect a Governor who looks out for everyone, keeps Texans safe, answers to the people instead of the special interests & guarantees that we all have equal opportunity to achieve our best in life,” O’Rourke said in a Twitter thread.

NewsNation affiliate KXAN reached out Thursday afternoon to Abbott’s office for comment and had not heard back at the time of publication.

According to reporting from The Texas Tribune, Abbott has said he is “100%” running for reelection but more recently breathed new life into long-lingering rumors he is thinking about a White House run. After 2022, Abbott said in a recent radio interview, “We’ll see what happens.”

NewsNation affiliate KXAN contributed to this report.