Will Hurd, a retired CIA officer and former Texas congressman, announced Thursday that he will join the race for the Republican presidential nomination, launching a long-shot bid as a moderate alternative to Republican hardliners.
“This morning, I filed to be the Republican nominee for President of the United States,” Hurd announced on “CBS Mornings.”
Hurd’s self-proclaimed “common sense republican“capable of winning over swing voters who have drifted away from the party in recent elections.
But he faces long odds in a primary field still dominated by former President Donald Trump. Recent polls show Trump has a significant lead over other presidential hopefuls. Hurd said if elected president he would not pardon Trump, a question other Republican candidates have largely sidestepped, and specifically referred to the classified documents case against the former president.
“The fact that Donald Trump has willingly kept this material and wants to be the leader of the free world is unacceptable to me,” Hurd said. If proven true, he added, Trump’s alleged behavior “spits in the face of the thousands of men and women who put themselves in harm’s way every day and every night to keep us safe.”
J. Miles Coleman of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics said Hurd’s bipartisan record is likely to hurt him in the Republican primary.
“He would be a very formidable candidate in the general election,” Coleman said, “which is part of the reason I suspect he will have a hard time getting the nomination.”
Hurd was first elected to the House of Representatives in 2014, when he unseated the incumbent Democrat to become the representative of a large portion of the southwest Texas border. He quickly established himself as a moderate in the party, although he aligned himself with the more conservative wing in his criticism of the FBI’s handling of an investigation into classified information that Hillary Clinton had sent to a server of private email when she was secretary of state.
After narrowly winning re-election in 2018, Hurd announced that he would retire from Congress before the 2020 election. He was the only black Republican in the House when he retired.
In recent weeks, his campaign has been taking shape. He does little visited New Hampshire to meet with voters and has launched attacks against the Republican front-runners. In a mid-May appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” he blamed Trump for Republican losses in the 2022 midterm elections and accused the former president of “looking back” instead of “to the future “.
Hurd called the 2024 battle between Trump and President Joe Biden “revenge from hell,” claiming that most Americans would prefer other candidates.
“Whether you’re in ruby red towns or deep blue cities, people care about putting food on the table, a roof over their heads and making sure the people they love are healthy, happy and safe,” he said .
Hurd has cast himself as a moderate Republican who can appeal to voters across the political spectrum. He recently authored a article calling himself a “gun-owning Republican” and advocating for new gun laws. He has emphasized helping Ukraine defend against Russian forces and addressing the rise of artificial intelligence and its national security implications. He is on the board of directors of OpenAI, the startup that created ChatGPT.
A former representative from a border district, Hurd has also made immigration a centerpiece of his nascent campaign. In a recent appearance at CNNcalled for a long-term plan to streamline legal immigration, increase deportations of people who come to the country illegally, and provide economic aid to Latin America to deter people from leaving their countries.
“The crisis we’re dealing with now started under Donald Trump,” he said. “It has gotten significantly worse under the Biden administration.”
Matt Terrill, managing partner of Firehouse Strategies, a public affairs firm founded by Republican strategists, said even long-shot candidates have a chance if they can gain momentum in states like Iowa, New Hampshire or South Carolina. that have first caucuses or primaries.
“It’s the voters in these early primary states, the delegates, they’re going to be the ones who ultimately decide this nomination,” he said. Candidates could win over these voters by showing how they can attract swing voters in a general election.
“Republican voters want to win,” Terrill said.
Jillian Frankel contributed.
