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Will Hurd, a former Texas congressman who was a part of a diminishing bloc of Republican moderates within the Home and was the one Black member of his caucus when he left workplace in 2021, introduced his candidacy for president on Thursday with a video message that attacked the G.O.P. front-runner, Donald J. Trump.
“If we nominate a lawless, egocentric, failed politician like Donald Trump, who misplaced the Home, the Senate and the White Home, everyone knows Joe Biden will win once more,” he mentioned, referring to Republican losses within the 2018 and 2022 midterm elections, along with Mr. Trump’s personal defeat in 2020.
Mr. Hurd, 45, represented the twenty third District for 3 phrases earlier than deciding to not run for re-election in 2020, when a bunch of G.O.P. moderates in Congress selected to retire as a substitute of showing on a ticket led by President Trump.
His district was bigger than some states, extending from El Paso to San Antonio alongside the southwestern border.
Mr. Hurd, who additionally made an look on “CBS Mornings,” emphasised in his video that Republicans wanted to appoint a forward-looking candidate who might unite the celebration and nation.
“I’ll give us the common sense management America so desperately wants,” he mentioned.
A formidable gantlet awaits Mr. Hurd, a long-shot candidate in a crowded G.O.P. presidential area. To qualify for the celebration’s first debate in August, candidates are required to muster assist of a minimum of 1 p.c in a number of nationwide polls acknowledged by the Republican Nationwide Committee. There are additionally fund-raising thresholds, together with a minimal of 40,000 distinctive donors to particular person campaigns.
Earlier than getting into politics, Mr. Hurd was an undercover officer for the C.I.A. and his tenure of practically a decade with the company included work in Afghanistan.
In Congress, he developed a repute for working throughout the aisle and drew consideration in 2017 when he car-pooled from Texas to Washington with Beto O’Rourke, a Democrat and Home colleague.
Whereas Mr. Hurd largely toed the Republican line, he was additionally identified for bucking Mr. Trump. Throughout his closing time period within the Home, Mr. Hurd voted greater than one-third of the time towards Mr. Trump’s positions.
Mr. Hurd was a very strident critic of the president’s push to construct a wall alongside your entire southern border, a trigger célèbre for Mr. Trump that he ran on in 2016. In a 2019 interview with Rolling Stone, Mr. Hurd referred to as Mr. Trump’s border wall initiative a “third-century resolution to a Twenty first-century drawback.”
It was not the primary time that Mr. Hurd had spoken so bluntly in opposition to a bit of Mr. Trump’s agenda.
When Mr. Trump signed an govt order in January 2017 blocking residents of seven Muslim-majority nations from getting into america, one of many first acts of his presidency, Mr. Hurd condemned it, saying the coverage “endangers the lives of 1000’s of American women and men in our army, diplomatic corps and intelligence providers.”
And when Mr. Trump attacked 4 freshman Democratic congresswomen of colour in 2019, Mr. Hurd denounced the president and criticized the course of the Republican Celebration.
“The celebration isn’t rising in a number of the largest elements of our nation,” he mentioned in a June 2019 speech to the Log Cabin Republicans, a conservative L.G.B.T.Q. group. “Why is that? I’ll let you know.”
“Don’t be a racist,” Mr. Hurd continued, in accordance with The Washington Blade. “Don’t be a misogynist, proper? Don’t be a homophobe. These are actual staple items that all of us ought to study once we had been in kindergarten.”
However whereas Mr. Hurd broke with Mr. Trump on some notable events, he additionally dismayed Mr. Trump’s critics when he voted in lock step with Home Republicans towards impeaching Mr. Trump the primary time in December 2019. Mr. Trump was impeached in a party-line vote by the Home for abuse of energy and obstruction of Congress, however acquitted by the Senate.
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