Former Texas Rep. Will Hurd, a moderate Republican and critic of Donald Trump, on Thursday announced a bid for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination.
The move puts him in competition with the former president, who is seeking to retake the White House after losing the 2020 election.
“If we nominate a lawless, selfish, failed politician like Donald Trump who lost the House, the Senate and the White House, we all know Joe Biden will win again,” Hurd said in a campaign announcement video posted on Twitter.
“Republicans deserve better. America deserves better. It’s common sense,” he added.
Hurd previewed his decision to run during a May interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
“Two-thirds of Americans want somebody other than Donald Trump and [Democratic incumbent] Joe Biden,” he said at the time. “That’s, like, the rematch from hell.”
Hurd, a former CIA clandestine officer, represented a vast swath of West Texas from 2015 to early 2021. When he revealed in 2019 that he would not seek a fourth term, he was the sole Black Republican in the U.S. House of Representatives.
After the 2016 election, Hurd distinguished himself as a conservative more willing to break with Trump than many of his colleagues. He was one of 20 House Republicans to vote against a 2017 bill that would have repealed core components of former President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act.
In 2019, Hurd called Trump’s tweets attacking the “Squad” — a group of House progressives that at the time included four women of color — as “racist and xenophobic.” He also condemned Trump’s apparent attempt to pressure Ukraine into investigating Biden’s son that year, even as he stopped short of voting to impeach Trump for his conduct in the matter.
And Hurd dubbed the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, “a coup led by a president that will not be peacefully removed from power.”
Hurd joins a growing field of Republican candidates hoping to take on Biden. In addition to Trump, his GOP rivals include Nikki Haley, a former United Nations ambassador and governor of South Carolina; multimillionaire entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy; and former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, who is similarly critical of Trump.
