Former Texas Rep. Will Hurd announced on Thursday that he’s running for the Republican nomination to be president. He joins at least 12 other Republicans who have announced their intention to run, including former president Donald Trump, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, and a long list of lesser lights.
The gaggle of candidates falls far short of the 17 candidates who required two debate stages in 2016. But what these candidates lack in stature, they make up for in experience and accomplishment. In fact, this group of Republican presidential candidates may be the most accomplished since 1980 when Senate Majority Leader Howard Baker; CIA Director George Bush; iconic conservative Rep. Phil Crane; former California Governor Ronald Reagan; and the outsized personality of the former governor of Texas, John Connally, gave the GOP field a special luster it hasn’t matched since.
Hurd is a different candidate. For one thing, he’s black. And while that shouldn’t matter, the reality is that it does because 90% of black voters back the Democrats. He’s also a former CIA agent and a specialist in cyber-security. Washington Post:
Hurd graduated college with a major in computer science, is a former CIA officer and was a senior adviser for a cybersecurity company before he became a member of Congress in early 2015. While in Congress through early 2021, he sponsored or co-sponsored key cybersecurity bills that became law, sat on important cyber-related committees and chaired a subcommittee with cyber oversight.
Hurd is also anti-Trump — virulently.
“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 his campaign announcement. “Republicans deserve better. America deserves better. It’s common sense.”
That statement alone realistically disqualifies Hurd from consideration by about 50% of Republicans — not just Trump worshippers but also many mainstream Republicans as well.
As Five-Thirty-Eight points out, Hurd will be fighting “over an already thin slice of the primary pie that constitutes a clear minority of primary voters.”
Just how small that slice is depends on how you measure it. One shorthand way to read the Republican race is to sum up the vote share that Trump and DeSantis receive in national polls, which adds up to nearly 75 percent in FiveThirtyEight’s national average. That is, the best-known “Trumpy” candidates (including the man himself) are pulling in around three-fourths of the vote, while the other candidates are garnering support from the remaining quarter.
Donald Trump’s polling may be out of this world, but the reality is a little more prosaic and has brought him down to earth. Some of the luster of invincibility has been rubbed off since 2020, and along with the growing number of indictments, the questions being asked are now about how much of a drag his candidacy will be down-ballot.
With six months before the first presidential nominating contests, Hurd will make the pitch that Donald Trump at the top of the Republican ticket would be a disaster. While Trump’s base will support him no matter what he’s done, or what any charges say he’s done, others will not be so forgiving. Include in that opposition a good slice of independent voters and at least some Republicans, and Trump’s path back to the White House becomes precarious, indeed.
It’s not that Will Hurd has a chance to win the nomination. He doesn’t. Hurd’s campaign is about sounding the alarm that Trump is unelectable and that another candidate is needed. Whether that candidate is Ron DeSantis or someone else doesn’t matter as much as Republicans waking up to their peril and dumping Trump before 2024 turns into the party’s Götterdämmerung.