Ex-Rep. Hurd stirs talk of run for 2024 GOP nom
WASHINGTON — Former U.S. Rep. Will Hurd was the first Texas Republican to visit the early GOP primary state of New Hampshire, where the potential presidential candidate tried to create a contrast with the elephant in the room: former President Donald Trump, who kicked off the Republican primary season with a keynote to the state party on Saturday.
Hurd struck a unifying tone according to excerpts of his speech — far from that of Trump, who told the crowd in a lengthy address that “I’m more angry now and I’m more committed now than I ever was” to retaking the White House.
“We’re going Marxist,” Trump declared before disparaging transgender athletes, Black Lives Matter activists, and migrants who cross the border illegally.
Hurd, on the other hand, stressed that “so much more unites us as a country than divides us.”
“I’m tired of being told to hate my neighbors because we disagree. They’re not our enemies,” Hurd said. “They’re our fellow Americans, and we’re going to need every last one of them to help take on the challenges our country faces, challenges to our way of life.”
Hurd — a vocal critic of Trump — is one of a handful of Texas Republicans weighing whether to enter a GOP primary field that has so far been frozen by the former president.
Hurd told Fox News that his message to New Hampshire Republicans, who cast ballots in the first GOP primary in the nation, that “they’re not just making a decision for themselves, but they’re making a decision for the rest of the country.”
Asked whether he plans to run, he said: “I always have an open mind about how to serve my country.”
The Helotes native and former CIA operative has been open about considering a White House run as a moderate who
can appeal to “normal people,” as he put it in an interview with the Atlantic last year.
But he is seen as a long shot candidate who needs to get to work quickly introducing himself to voters outside of Texas, where he represented a battleground border district over three terms in Congress. Hurd is perhaps best known for a 2017 cross-country road trip with Democrat Beto O’Rourke, which the two then-congressmen livestreamed and drew national attention for the rare bipartisan showing.
Since leaving Congress in 2021, Hurd wrote a book calling for an “American Reboot” and launched a super PAC, the Future Leaders Fund, that raised $1.2 million to support like-minded candidates in the midterms.