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Former Consultant Will Hurd, a Republican from a swing district in Texas who served three phrases, faces the daunting job of building himself in a discipline of a lot better-known presidential candidates.
Listed below are 5 issues to find out about Mr. Hurd, who announced his 2024 bid on Thursday.
He’s a former C.I.A. officer.
Mr. Hurd received a job with the C.I.A. straight out of school in 2000 and spent greater than eight years as an spy, with stints in Afghanistan, India and Pakistan.
His first task with the C.I.A. got here after Al Qaeda suicide bombers attacked the usS. Cole, an American warship, killing 17 crew members. His subsequent task got here after Sept. 11.
In an interview with The Guardian final yr, he mentioned the job had ended his engagement to a fiancée: “You understand, it most likely had a chilling impact on our relationship, particularly if you affirm: ‘Hey babe, I really work within the C.I.A., and we’re going to Islamabad. Pack your luggage. Nice!’”
He has experience in cybersecurity.
Mr. Hurd has a bachelor’s diploma in laptop science from Texas A&M College and, after leaving the C.I.A., labored as a senior adviser at a cybersecurity agency known as FusionX.
When he was elected to Congress in 2014, he made cybersecurity one among his fundamental focuses and led the Home Oversight Subcommittee on Info Expertise.
He organized a listening to in 2015 on encryption and its potential results on legislation enforcement’s investigative talents — a difficulty he mentioned in an interview with Motherboard at a hacking convention that yr. He opposed efforts backed by intelligence businesses to weaken encryption on smartphones.
He has continued to work within the expertise area since leaving Congress in 2021, and joined the board of OpenAI, the bogus intelligence laboratory that developed ChatGPT.
He has been important of Trump.
Mr. Hurd has not been shy about criticizing former President Donald J. Trump, and has executed so since Mr. Trump first ran in 2016.
In October 2016, after the discharge of the “Entry Hollywood” recording during which Mr. Trump bragged about assaulting ladies, Mr. Hurd called on him to go away the presidential race. In 2017, he urged Mr. Trump to apologize for claiming there was violence “on many sides” throughout a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va. And in 2018, in a guest essay for The New York Times, he wrote that Mr. Trump had “actively participated in a Russian disinformation marketing campaign.”
Mr. Hurd additionally denounced many elements of Mr. Trump’s immigration coverage — describing his proposed border wall as a “third-century answer to a Twenty first-century downside,” calling the separation of migrant kids from their mother and father “unacceptable,” and saying that his ban on vacationers from a listing of majority-Muslim international locations “endangers the lives of 1000’s of American women and men in our army, diplomatic corps and intelligence companies.”
He was an unusually bipartisan lawmaker.
Mr. Hurd represented one of the vital aggressive congressional districts within the nation — an unlimited, largely Hispanic stretch of South Texas that he received by 2.1 proportion factors in 2014, 1.3 proportion factors in 2016 and half a proportion level in 2018 — and his voting report mirrored that.
Breaking from Republican orthodoxy, Mr. Hurd supported laws to finish a authorities shutdown in 2019 and to guard L.G.B.T.Q. individuals from discrimination. He additionally pushed for immigration reform, together with defending younger individuals from deportation.
And he drew consideration in 2017 for a live-streamed highway journey from Texas to Washington with Beto O’Rourke, then a Democratic member of Congress.
“My remaining message for my colleagues as I depart this physique: Don’t deal with bipartisanship like a four-letter phrase,” he mentioned in his farewell speech from the Home flooring.
Mr. Hurd did vote the Republican line more often than not. In 2015 and 2017, he supported payments to ban abortion after 20 weeks. And although he voted in opposition to repealing the Inexpensive Care Act in 2017, that was solely after it grew to become clear that the invoice would go anyway; he was against the Obama-era coverage. He additionally opposed the Iran nuclear deal and known as for a extra hawkish coverage in opposition to the Islamic State.
He was one of many solely Black Republicans in Congress.
When Mr. Hurd was first sworn into Congress in January 2015, he was one among only two Black Republicans within the Home. By the point he left in January 2021, he was the one one.
He’s the son of a Black father and a white mom, and has spoken about his background and his expertise as an individual of colour on many events.
“Two centuries in the past, I might have been counted as three-fifths of an individual, and right this moment, I can say I’ve had the honour of serving three phrases in Congress,” he mentioned in a press release upon announcing in 2019 that he wouldn’t run for re-election.
On the time, he said he was leaving partially as a result of he thought he may very well be more practical in electing extra numerous Republicans to Congress from the skin — although that has not ended up being his skilled focus. The variety of Black Republicans within the Home has rebounded barely, to 4.
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