June 22, 2023: Former Texas Congressman Will Hurd announced he’s running for president on “CBS Mornings” Thursday. (CBS News)
“This morning, I filed to be the Republican nominee for president of the United States,” Hurd told “CBS Mornings”
Hurd, 45, was first elected to serve Texas 23rd Congressional District in 2014, beating a Democratic incumbent by two points. The majority-Hispanic district stretches along the Rio Grande, west of San Antonio and east of El Paso. Hurd was reelected by narrow margins twice before joining a wave of congressional Republicans who retired before the 2020 election.
…”I believe the Republican Party can be the party that talks about the future, not the past,” Hurd said. “We should be putting out a vision of how do we have unprecedented peace, how do we have a thriving economy, how do we make sure our kids have a world class education, regardless of their age and location? We can do this. It’s hard. But here’s one thing I’ve learned: If we remember two things, we can pull this off. America is better together. Way more unites us than divides us.”…
…As a former CIA officer, Hurd said that Trump’s indictment consisting of 37 felony charges and related to his handling of classified documents after he left the White House is “frustrating,” and that “nobody’s above the law, and you are innocent until proven guilty”…
June 23, 2023: Former Texas Rep. Will Hurd said he would not sign a Republican National Committee (RNC) pledge to back the eventual GOP nominee for president in 2024, after launching his bid for the nomination Thursday. (The Hill)
“I won’t be signing any kind of pledges, and I don’t think that parties should be trying to rig who should be on a debate stage,” Hurd told CNN.
The loyalty pledge is among the criteria Republican candidates must meet to qualify for the first GOP presidential primary debate in August, in addition to polling and fundraising requirements.
“I am not in the business of lying to the American people in order to get a microphone, and I’m not going to support Donald Trump,” Hurd said. “And so I can’t honestly say I’m going to sign something even if he may or may not be the nominee.”
Former President Trump is currently leading a crowded Republican field, despite being indicted for a second time earlier this month on federal charges related to his handling of classified materials…
July 28, 2023: Former Rep. Will Hurd, (R-Texas) on Friday was jeered by a crowd of Iowa Republicans at a gathering for 2024 presidential candidates when he asserted former President Trump is only running for the White House “to stay out of prison”. (The Hill)
“One of the things we need in our elected leaders: To tell the truth, even if it’s not popular,” Hurd, a candidate himself, said at the Iowa GOP’s Lincoln Dinner.
“Donald Trump is not running for president to make America great again. Donald Trump is not even running to represent the people that voted for him in 2016 and 2020,” Donald Trump is running for president to stay out of prison,” Hurd continued, eliciting boos and heckles from those in the audience.
“I know the truth is hard,” he added, echoing comments he made on Thursday. “But if we elect Donald Trump we are willingly giving Joe Biden for more years in the White House”
The former congressman, who served three terms in the House and spent several years working at the CIA, has been sharply critical of Trump and argued the former president is unfit for another term in the White House…
July 31, 2023: Will Hurd, who served in the CIA for a decade and as a member of the House of Representatives from Texas for six years, said that he was running for president because he believed the country is facing generational challenges – including artificial intelligence, competition with China, a struggling education system, and precarious civic health. (NPR)
“Democracy is fragile,” Hurd said in a conversation with The NPR Politics Podcast “We need people that are working towards it.”…
…On why he voted against former President Trump’s impeachment while serving in the House of Representatives.
My standard for impeachment has always been a violation of the law. When I was running in 2014 in Republican primaries, every candidate forum, there was a question: Are you going to impeach Barack Hussein Obama? And it was like, “for what?” I do not view impeachment as a political tool. And so my standard has always been a violation of the law. And when it came to Donald Trump’s phone call with President Zelenskyy, it did not meat the criteria for bribery or extortion. Volodymyr Zelenskyy did not know that the aid had been paused. And the aid ultimately was given…
…Hurd acknowledges that Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election – and he won’t support Trump if Trump is the nominee.
Yes, Joe Biden won. And let me put a finer point on it. The election was not stolen from Donald Trump. He lost it.
He lost it because he was incapable of growing the GOP brand to those largest groups of voters that we talked about earlier, women in the suburbs, folks in Black and brown communities, and people under the age of 35. And the 2020 elections was one of the most secure elections in our history.
I’m not voting for Donald Trump. I’m not going to vote for Joe Biden. I’ll probably write somebody in [if those candidates are nominated.]
…He supports a federal 15-week abortion ban – but says states should expand maternal and neonatal care.
If Congress put a 15-week ban on my desk, I would sign it.
But also, if states are restricting this, those states should also have the best neonatal health, the best maternity health care.
The fact that many Black women in the United States – that their death rates during childbirth are equivalent to some in the developing world is absolutely outrageous.
So we should be talking about sex education, making sure contraception is available if this patchwork system is what’s in place…
August 18, 2023: Former Rep. Wil Hurd (R-Texas) went after fellow presidential candidate Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) on Friday, saying his campaign is “circling the drain” after a leaked debate prep memo suggests he stand behind former President Trump at the first GOP debate next week. (The Hill)
Hurd said in an CNN interview that he wants to be “speaking truth to power,” and is planning to attend the debate in Milwaukee if he can meet the criteria before then.
“I’m not going to be like DeSantis and defend Donald Trump, which is absolutely crazy,” he said. “The Ron DeSantis campaign is circling the drain. The fact that they’re having to cut so much staff, they don’t have the resources to do their own debate prep.”…
…Hurd has not yet qualified for the Wednesday debate in Wisconsin. While his campaign announced Thursday he reached the 40,000 donor threshold, he is still one poll short of qualifying…
October 9, 2023: Former Texas Rep. Will Hurd announced Monday that he is ending his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024 and is endorsing former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley. (CNN)
“Unfortunately, it has become clear to me and my team that the time has come to suspend our campaign,” he wrote in a statement, adding that “it is important to recognize the realities of the political landscape and the need to consolidate our party around one person to defeat both Donald Trump and President (Joe) Biden.”
The former congressman and CIA officer, who had struggled to gain traction in a crowded GOP field dominated by Trump, offered a start warning to his party: “If the Republican Party nominates Donald Trump or the various personalities jockeying to imitate his divisive, crass behavior, we will lose.”…
…In backing Haley, a former ambassador to the United Nations under Trump, Hurd praised her as a leader who can navigate national security challenges. “Ambassador Haley has shown a willingness to articulate a different vision for the country than Donald Trump and has an unmatched grasp on the complexities of our foreign policy,” he said…
October 16, 2023: Will Hurd wants to be the most powerful man in the world. Like so many candidates before him, he knew the loneliness of the long distance runner crisscrossing Iowa and New Hampshire in a quest for votes that might make him president of the United States. But it was not to be. (The Guardian)
This week Hurd called it a day after a campaign that failed to make much of a splash. Indeed, arguably his biggest headline came in July when he declared, “Donald Trump is running to stay out of prison,” and was roundly booed at the Iowa Republican Party’s Lincoln Dinner. Unrepentant, Hurd told them: “Listen, I know the truth is hard.”…
…Hurd, 46, is no stranger to the campaign trail. He served three terms in the House of Representatives and was the chamber’s sole Black Republican during his final two years in office. He represented Texas’s then most competitive district, which was heavily Hispanic and stretched from the outskirts of San Antonio to El Paso, spanning more than 800 miles of US-Mexico border…
…Hurd was the last major candidate to join the already crowded Republican presidential primary field when he announced his run in late July. He campaigned as a pragmatic, pro-business moderate with strong national security credentials who was unafraid to seek bipartisan consensus. He took on the grind of countless hours on planes, in hotels and away from family with good grace…
…Nine in 10 people in Iowa and New Hampshire are white. Democrats, for their part, have revised their 2024 presidential primary schedule, replacing Iowa with the more racially diverse South Carolina as the leadoff voting state. Hurd, the some of a Black father and white mother, has written about the racism he endured as teenager and entitled the first part of his book: “The GOP needs to look like America.”…
Trump alternative. Her campaign reported that she raised more than $11m between July and September and this week George Will, an influential Washington Post columnist, called on South Carolina Senator Tim Scott and other contenders to drop out and rally around the “experienced, polished, steely and unintimidated” Haley”…
January 16, 2024: As a representative of a border district and a moderate, Hurd was an outspoken critic of Trump’s immigration policies while serving in Congress. Hurd opted not to seek reelection in 2020 because he felt out of step with the hard right turn his party had taken under Trump. However, he joined his Republican colleagues in voting against Trump’s impeachment in 2019. (Vox)…
…Hurd was also known as a bipartisan dealmaker during his time in Congress, breaking with his party on issues such as LGBTQ rights, gun control, and to push to repeal the Affordable Care Act. But given that the Republican Party has only further dug in its heels on MAGA politics since his departure from office, Republican voters haven’t been all that interested in a candidate who reaches across the aisle, and didn’t seem interested this time.
Hurd struggled to stand out in a field already filled with big names — not to mention all the other lesser-known candidates fighting to increase single-digit poll numbers — and ultimately retired from the race in October 2023. He endorsed Nikki Haley.