Republicans got some good news on Monday when Democratic candidate Gina Ortiz Jones conceded in the race to represent Texas’s 23rd Congressional District. Republican incumbent Will Hurd held onto his seat by a margin of about 1,150 votes.
“While we came up short this time, we ran a race of which we can be proud,” Ortiz Jones said in a statement. “I remain committed to serving my community and country and I wish Will Hurd the courage to fight for TX-23 in the way in which our district deserves.”
Ortiz Jones had requested a 48-hour extension of last week’s deadline for provisional ballots to be counted, which was rejected by a judge. Ortiz Jones, formerly an Air Force intelligence officer and an Iraq war veteran, would have been the first Filipina-American and the first lesbian to represent the district.
Hurd, who previously spent nine and a half years as a CIA officer, was first elected to represent the gargantuan swing district in 2014. He has cultivated a moderate, bipartisan brand in Washington, and he is a favorite among Republican leaders in the House.
Hurd has advocated for a bill to protect Dreamers from deportation, and he voted against House Speaker Paul Ryan’s American Health Care Act last spring.
The San Antonio native has worked to become intimately familiar with the people and places in the farthest reaches of the massive district; he takes an annual voyage to all of its 29 counties, meeting voters and eating Dairy Queen blizzards along the way. He credits his ability to hold on to his seat to an independent, local mindset, too. Hurd’s disagreement with President Donald Trump’s campaign promise to erect a wall along the southern border is well-known, and he made headlines over the summer when he wrote an op-ed firmly condemning Trump for siding with Russian president Vladimir Putin over U.S. intelligence officials on the issue of Russian interference in the 2016 election.
When I visited Hurd’s district in September, he told me on the campaign trail that he was confident in his electoral prospects, because “people know my positions, my background.”
