Former Texas Rep. Will Hurd announces presidential bid

Former Texas Rep. Will Hurd announced Thursday that he’s throwing his hat in the ring for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination.

Hurd, who was first elected to his congressional seat in 2014 and did not run for reelection in 2020, now enters the crowded presidential field of 13 other candidates as a major underdog.

The former congressman has been an outspoken critic of former President Donald Trump and said last month that a race between President Joe Biden and Trump would be a “rematch from hell.”

“Someone like me, right, a dark horse candidate, can pull this off,” Hurd, 45, told “CBS Mornings” Thursday. “One, you can’t be afraid of Donald Trump. Too many of these candidates in this race are afraid of Donald Trump. But we also have to articulate a different vision.”

In a video announcing his candidacy, Hurd listed illegal immigration and inflation as chief among his motivations to run.

“Our enemies plot, create chaos, and threaten the American dream. At home, illegal immigration and fentanyl stream into our country. Inflation, still out of control. Crime and homelessness growing in our cities,” Hurd says in the video.

Before his career in politics, Hurd was an undercover CIA officer working in counterterrorism.

Hurd won his first election by defeating incumbent Democratic Rep. Pete Gallego by roughly 2,400 votes in 2014, surprising strategists in both parties. In 2018, Hurd won reelection by less than a thousand votes.

When announcing his retirement, Hurd denied that he was concerned about his reelection chances in an increasingly competitive district but instead said he left Congress to help the GOP become more diverse. He was the only Black Republican in the House at the time of his retirement announcement.

“President Biden can’t solve these problems — or won’t,” Hurd says in the video. “And 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.”