By EMILY ZANOTTI

Don’t touch their beloved Beto!

Leftists on social media lost their minds Monday after The New York Times released an exposé, detailing Sen. Ted Cruz’s (R-TX) Democratic challenger, Beto O’Rourke‘s, early career in real estate development, and revealing for the first time this campaign that O’Rourke isn’t a blue collar hero but rather the son-in-law of a billionaire.

The NYT reports that O’Rourke’s father-in-law proposed gentrifying a neighborhood in El Paso by force, bulldozing public housing to make way for restaurants, a shopping district, and an art walk. Beto, the Times claims, served as the “pretty face” for the plan while also serving in city government, and often tangled with low-income El Paso residents protesting the plan.

“What might not have been entirely clear to everyone at the meeting was that the plan’s success was largely dependent on the city’s ability to convince property owners in the most blighted areas to turn over their holdings to the private trust. In the case of recalcitrant owners, eminent domain would be used,” the Times reported.

Beto, who was an El Paso councilman at the time his father-in-law was looking to make the big changes, eventually abstained from voting on the matter, but not until after it was pointed out that publicly defending the development was, for Beto, a conflict of interest.

The New York Times is, by no means, a right-leaning publication, and is likely pulling — perhaps quietly — for Beto O’Rourke to unseat Ted Cruz. But leftists lashed out immediately, regardless, accusing the paper of trying to tank Beto’s upstart campaign just days before Election Day.

Some Twitter users even compared The New York Times’s “hit job” on Beto to a piece the paper published on a suddenly re-opened investigation into Hillary Clinton‘s handling of classified information, a development that happened just days before the 2016 Presidential election, through no fault of The New York Times.

The good news for the NYT, at least, is that it probably won’t be held responsible for Beto O’Rourke’s likely loss to Ted Cruz. Despite raking in more than $38 million just last quarter (and spending $22 million of that), O’Rourke is running at least 6 points behind the incumbent Republican in most polls.