Rep. Will Hurd, R-Texas, speaks during a news conference on the use of the “queen-of-the-hill” rule for DACA legislation in the House on Wednesday, April 18, 2018.
Bill Clark | CQ-Roll Call Group | Getty Images
Will Hurd, a retired CIA officer and former Texas congressman, announced Thursday that is joining the race for the Republican presidential nomination, launching a long-shot bid as a moderate alternative to GOP hard-liners.
Hurd, who made the announcement on “CBS Mornings,” has billed himself as a “common-sense Republican” capable of winning over swing voters who have strayed from the party in recent elections.
But he faces long odds in a growing primary field still dominated by former President Donald Trump, analysts say. Recent polls show Trump with a commanding lead over other presidential hopefuls.
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’d be a very formidable general election candidate,” Coleman said, “which is part of the reason why I suspect he’s going to 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 swath of the southwestern Texas border. He quickly established himself as a moderate in the party, though he aligned himself with the more conservative wing in his criticisms of the FBI’s handling of an investigation into classified information Hillary Clinton had sent over a private email server when she was the secretary of state.
After narrowly winning re-election in 2018, Hurd announced he would retire from Congress ahead of the 2020 election. He was the lone Black Republican in the House when he retired.
In recent weeks, his campaign has taken shape. He recently visited New Hampshire to meet with voters and has lodged 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 charged the former president with “looking backwards” instead of “to the future.”
Hurd called a 2024 battle between Trump and President Joe Biden the “rematch from hell,” claiming that a majority of 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 head, 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 an article calling himself a “firearm-owning Republican” and advocating for new gun laws. He has emphasized aiding Ukraine in defending itself 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.
The former representative of a border district, Hurd has also made immigration a focal point of his nascent campaign. In a recent appearance on CNN, he called 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 discourage people from leaving their countries.
“The crisis that we’re dealing with now began under Donald Trump,” he said. “It’s gotten significantly worse under the Biden administration.”
Matt Terrill, managing partner at Firehouse Strategies — a public affairs firm founded by Republican strategists — said that even long-shot candidates have a chance if they can gain momentum in states such as Iowa, New Hampshire or South Carolina, which have early caucuses or primaries.
“It’s the voters in these early primary states, the delegates, they’re going to be the ones who eventually decide this nomination,” he said. Candidates might be able to win over these voters by demonstrating how they can attract swing voters in a general election.
“Republican voters want to win,” Terrill said.
