"Will Hurd is the Future of the GOP" And The Future Of The GOP Looks Worse And Worse Everyday

Hurd and Jones

Thursday night one of the most vulnerable Republicans, Will Hurd (TX-23), announced he is retiring. His gigantic district has the longest border with Mexico of any district in the U.S. and stretches from a sliver of east San Antonio down to the Rio Grande and then follows the border through Eagle Pass, Del Rio, Big Bend National Park, and Socorro just south of where El Paso and Ciudad Juarez meet. Technically the PVI is R+1, but Cook is slow and the district has already turned bluer than the PVI indicates. The population is about 70% Latino; Beto won the district and even Hillary managed to beat Trump by over 3 points in 2016. Last year Hurd barely held onto his seat against a very weak Democratic opponent, 103,285 (49.2%) to 102,359 (48.7%). Bexar County is, by far, where most of the votes come from and Hurd just managed to hold onto it. The second biggest source of votes is El Paso County, which went for Democrat Gina Jones by a landslide. Of the 29 counties and pieces of counties that make up the district, Hurd won 18 and Jones won 11. As Hurd pointed out himself, "When you look at trends, the two-largest growing groups of voters are Latinos and young people. And we know what the broader trends are happening there." And he was talking about the whole state! His district is already, essentially blue.

The Democrats have been nominating really garbage candidates there for many years. The last Democratic congressman, Blue Dog Pete Gallego was bad enough to cure almost anyone of ever wanting to vote for a Democrat again.

The prophetic quote in the title comes from a 2017 Politico feature by Tim Alberta, in which he has a caveat: "If he can hold on to the toughest seat in Texas." Alberta wrote that "Of the 36 congressional districts in Texas, 35 are safely controlled by Republicans or Democrats; Hurd’s is the outlier. Not only is his district the biggest in the state-- encompassing 58,000 square miles, covering all or parts of 29 counties, and including 820 miles of U.S.-Mexico border—it’s easily the most competitive, with both parties pumping millions of dollars into the 23rd every election cycle." This cycle the GOP will pump millions in again-- and lose. Not because the Democrats have a good candidate; so far they're stupidly running Jones again, but because Texans here are ready to take out their hatred of Trump on the whole party.

Alberta wrote that Gallego managed to win the district because he's a unique "phenom. Republicans and Democrats who have witnessed his ascent say he possesses a rare combination of competence as a policymaker, responsiveness as a representative and ferocity as a campaigner. Consider that during his first term-- with Barack Obama, a Democrat, still occupying the White House-- Hurd authored more bills that were signed into law than any other member of Congress. (Most aren’t 'sexy' bills of national interest, he says, but rather targeted toward his constituents, such as winning overtime pay for the Border Patrol.) Meanwhile, the freshman lawmaker found time to systematically explore every parcel of his district, assemble a staff that quickly became known as one of the most effective on Capitol Hill, and raise copious sums of money to power a reelection bid that some in his party had privately written off." The opposite of Gallego, who is stupid, self-serving and lazy (as well as conservative).

Hurd is the only African-American Republican in Congress. Next year the Republican caucus in Congress is likely to be a smaller, all white, leaderless, bickering hell. And it's not going to include a member from TX-23. As NBC blared yesterday, Hurd's Surprise Reirement Is Big Bad News For The GOP. Chuck Todd and team: This 6th announced retirement in 2 weeks has already caused Cook to move the district from toss up to lean Dem. "Like Ryan’s announcement in 2018, it sends the message to GOP donors and potential recruits that flipping the House might be out of reach for Republicans" and eliminates any pretense of diversity in the caucus. "And when it comes to the immigration debate, it robs the GOP of their only member representing a district on the U.S.-Mexico border. But there’s an even more significant story going on here: The non-Trump wing of the Republican Party wants out. Think about the other GOP retirements we’ve seen-- Reps. Susan Brooks (R-IN), Martha Roby (R-AL) and now Hurd. And these Republicans parachuting out of the Republican Party underscore how vulnerable Trump really is, despite the growing economy. The fewer Will Hurd-like members running in 2020 reduces the number of moderate/non-Trump Republicans who would eagerly go to the polls for those representatives-- and then still hold their nose and vote for the president. The Republican Party is getting smaller and smaller, and that isn’t good news for an incumbent Republican president."

Good for America though. As so is this: