Hurd still planning on future in politics
WASHINGTON — At a high-tech gathering last week, Texas U.S. Rep. Will Hurd fielded a question about who would be advocates for the industry now that he’s retiring from Congress.
Hurd, who had just lectured on artificial intelligence and cyber threats, hastened to remind the audience that he won’t disappear from the public stage.
“I’m 42 years old. I’m not retiring. I’m just getting started to continue to provide leadership at the intersection of national security and technology,” he said.
Hurd, a three-term congressman from San Antonio, a former CIA case officer and the only African-American Republican in the U.S. House, also is laying the groundwork for the next phase in his political career, which could include a run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024.
He speaks coyly about the prospect of a national campaign while dropping hints, as starry-eyed pol
iticians typically do. And crystal balls are seldom so cloudy as now, with the leader of the Republican Party facing impeachment proceedings.
“Can I be helpful? Is that the best way for me to continue to help my country? I think it’s really hard to say because it’s light years away,” he said during an interview. “My mom always said work for something larger than yourself.”
Hurd is expanding his horizons in a way familiar to presidential hopeful. Next month, he will travel to New Hampshire to raise money for candidates, his second trip to the state that holds the nation’s first primary.
He’s using his Leadership PAC – which goes by the name Having Unwavering Resolve and Determination (HURD) – to donate thousands of dollars to candidates in New Hampshire and in Iowa, which opens primary seasons with caucus voting. Politicians aiming nationally cultivate allies in the early voting states.
And he is forming a new organization that will serve as a political base before and after he leaves office in January 2021. In that role he has a goal that his mother might advocate: changing the Republican Party.
The aims are lofty for someone who survived in 2018 by 926 votes in a district that stretches from San Antonio to El Paso and includes more than 800 miles of the border. With re-election next year uncertain, Hurd announced his retirement in August, cashing in while he could with bigger stakes in mind. Allies also have raised the possibility of Hurd running for the Senate if Ted Cruz decides not to seek a third term.
What is GOP’s future?
So far, 17 GOP House members have announced that they won’t run again next year, six of them in Texas, reflecting the difficulty of working in the minority in the House, as well as angst about the 2020 election chances for congressional candidates given the turmoil in the Donald Trump-led Republican Party.
Hurd’s approach is much different than others quitting Congress, some of whom have all but disappeared from public view.
He’s a ready performer for CNN and cable TV as well as Sunday morning network news shows, including CBS’ Face the Nation on Oct 20. His House Intelligence Committee post has given him opportunities for exposure since the early days of the Russian election meddling disclosures and will continue to do so for months with impeachment and the Ukraine scandal simmering.
He writes op-eds, as he did for USA Today in August, often about an issue that arouses his passion.
Even as a pending retiree, Hurd gets noticed. In a column this month, conservative writer George Will featured Hurd as one Republican who understands the electoral woes of the Republican Party.
It’s not possible to know what the Republican Party will look like after the departure of Donald Trump, whenever that might be. Hurd is giving the future plenty of thought, and what he sees is a GOP in need of change.
“It needs to start looking like the rest of the country,” he said, speaking in his Washington office, a new iteration of his oft-quoted assertion that the Texas Republican Party needs to start looking like Texas.
Republicans “hemorrhaged support” in 2018 among minorities, young people and suburban women, Hurd observed.
“We need to be competitive in urban climates and be able take our principals and theories and make them attractive to all Americans. People have to trust us, and if they trust us, they will listen to us,” he said.
“There’s an opportunity because Democrats and independents are concerned about the direction of the Democratic Party,” he said, noting Medicare for All health insurance proposals from 2020 Democratic hopefuls and other proposals featuring more government in peoples’ lives.
“We need to show up in places where Republicans haven’t showed up,” he said — which is what Hurd says he will be doing in the coming months on behalf of GOP candidates running in the 2020 election.
It remains to be seen how many invitations that a retiring congressman will get.
“At this point he doesn’t have much of a profile outside Texas,” said GOP-aligned pollster Whit Ayers, who wrote a book about what his party must do to survive.
“But Hurd is exactly the kind of candidate on which a future successful Republican Party will be based, along with people like Marco Rubio and Nikki Haley,” he said, referring to the Florida senator and a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. “We need conservative voices who don’t look like traditional Republican white men. They can send a signal that the party is adapting to a new America without forsaking Republican principals.”
For Hurd, a challenge may be striking a balance between presenting himself as an independent voice as he has sought to do on immigration and other matters in his competitive district, while at the same time being loyal to a president under siege.
AI key to world power
In a CNN interview recently, he said that impeachment should be considered if Trump did indeed withhold aid to Ukraine while seeking dirt on the Biden family.
But like other Republicans, he’s been critical of how Democrats’ are pursuing investigations. In the interview, he complained about needing to be cleared by Democratic staff on the Intelligence Committee in order to read transcripts of depositions underway.
“Stuff is leaked piecemeal,” he said. “You have opening statements and then you have someone leak something that was said in the committee with none of the context. The intent is trying to influence something in one direction,” he said.
Despite being in the minority until he leaves Congress — “decreased
bandwidth,” as he puts it — Hurd said he intends to continue pursuing on the technology and security issues that have given him a means to stand out in Congress.
That includes working with Democrats to fashion future policies related to artificial intelligence, one of the issues he embraces that can appeal to people of different political persuasions.
“The only thing I agree with Vladimir Putin on is that whoever masters AI will master the world. There is no second place,” Hurd said at the recent Washington high-tech gathering. “If China wants to continue stealing our technology, then let’s steal their engineers.”
Hurd likely could rely on Big Tech for some financial backing if he does run again, judging by reaction to that speech.
“My heart goes out to him if he does run for president. I’d support him whatever he wants to do,” said Joe Jarzombek, of New Braunfels, global manager for Synopsys software supply chain.
Hurd said he intends to continue speaking about security issues, which to him include robust planning to protect against cybersecurity breaches and what he refers to as “bad AI.”
“Can I continue to do this in the media? Can I continue to do this in the private sector? Can I do it in academia as well? What that is going to look like is going to evolve until January 2021 and ultimately, politically, I’ll stay involved,” he said.
“If the opportunity arises to serve, I’ll always evaluate that.”