Will Hurd, a former Texas congressman and member of the dwindling House Republican moderates, was the only black member of his caucus He announced his candidacy for president on Thursday when he retires in 2021. with video message It attacked Republican front-runner Donald J. Trump.
Referring to Republican losses in the 2018 and 2022 midterm elections, he said, “If we nominate a lawless, selfish and failed politician like Donald Trump who lost the House, Senate and White House, We all know Joe Biden will win again.” On top of Trump’s own defeat in 2020, the election.
After serving three terms as president of the 23rd District, Hurd, 45, decided not to run for re-election in 2020, when Congress was dominated by moderates. chose to retire Instead of appearing on a President Trump-led ticket.
His constituency was wider than some states and stretched along the southwestern border from El Paso to San Antonio.
Heard, who also appeared inCBS Morning“The Republican Party needs to nominate a forward-looking candidate who will unite the party and the country,” he stressed in the video.
“He will give us the common-sense leadership that America desperately needs,” he said.
As a front-runner in the crowded Republican presidential race, Hurd faces a formidable challenge. To be eligible to participate in the party’s first debate in August, candidates must: Collect at least 1 percent support in multiple national polls Recognized by the Republican National Committee. There are also funding criteria, such as a minimum of 40,000 unique contributors to individual campaigns.
Before entering politics, Hurd was an undercover agent for the CIA, whose nearly ten-year tenure with the CIA included a stint in Afghanistan.
Working across the aisle in Congress has earned him a reputation, and he made headlines in 2017. Carpool with Beto O’Rourke from Texas to WashingtonDemocrats and colleagues in the House.
Heard has largely stuck to Republican lines, but has also been known to push back against Trump. During his final term in the House of Representatives, Hurd voted against Trump’s position by more than a third.
Hurd has been a particularly harsh critic of the president’s push to build a wall across the southern border, a pretext for Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. In a 2019 interview with Rolling Stone magazine, Hurd called Trump.President Trump’s Border Wall Initiative “3rd Century Solutions to 21st Century Problems”
It wasn’t the first time Hurd had so outspokenly spoken out against some of Trump’s policies.
When Trump signed the executive order in January 2017 Block nationals of seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the United StatesMr. Hurd, one of the first acts of the presidency condemned itsaid the policy “endangers the lives of thousands of American men and women in the military, diplomatic corps and intelligence services.”
And when Trump attacked four Democratic freshmen of color in 2019, Heard said: blamed the president criticized the direction of the Republican Party.
In June 2019, he said in a speech at the Log Cabin Republican Party, a conservative LGBTQ group, that “the party is not growing in some large areas of our country.” “Why? I’ll tell you.”
“Don’t be racist,” Hurd added. washington blade. “Don’t be misogynistic, right? Don’t be homophobic. These are really basic things we should all learn in kindergarten.”
But while Heard broke with Trump on several notable occasions, he disappointed Trump’s critics. voted in line with the Republicans in the House Trump first opposed his impeachment in December 2019. Trump was impeached on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress in a partisan vote in the House, but was acquitted in the Senate.
