Hurd suspends presidential bid, backs Haley
WASHINGTON — Former Texas congressman Will Hurd suspended his Republican presidential bid Monday, abandoning a brief campaign built on criticizing Donald Trump at a time when his party seems even more determined to embrace the former president.
Hurd said on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, that he was endorsing Nikki Haley, a former South Carolina governor and US ambassador to the United Nations, for the GOP nomination.
He said 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.”
Hurd was the last major candidate to join the already crowded Republican primary field when he announced his run in late July. He leaves the race after failing to gain traction as a pragmatic moderate who pledged to lead the party away from Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement. Hurd failed to qualify for both the first GOP debate in Milwaukee in August and the second debate the following month in Simi Valley, Calif.
Hurd ending his campaign follows another Republican candidate, Mayor Francis Suarez of Miami, who became the first presidential hopeful to suspend his campaign shortly after failing to make the first debate stage.
A clandestine CIA officer who worked in Pakistan, Hurd served three terms in the House through January 2021 and was the chamber’s only Black Republican during his final two years in office. He represented Texas’ then-most competitive district, which was heavily Hispanic and stretched from the outskirts of San Antonio to El Paso, encompassing more than 800 miles of Texas-Mexico border.