Update, Nov. 7: After the Associated Press called the race in Texas’s behemoth 23rd district for Republican incumbent Will Hurd late Tuesday night, his Democratic opponent, Gina Ortiz Jones unexpectedly retook the lead. As of Wednesday morning, Hurd had regained his footing — With 100 percent of votes in, he is up by a razor thin margin of 689 votes. The AP has retracted its projection, and the Texas Tribune says the race is too close to call. A recount is likely.
Hurd has represented the swing district since he was elected in 2014, when he beat Democratic incumbent Pete Gallego. The former CIA officer managed to hang onto the historically fickle seat in 2016 (narrowly, by about 3,000 votes) by putting in time meeting voters and criss-crossing the 23rd, which is roughly the size of Georgia. Despite having a bit of an independent streak, the Texan remains a favorite among GOP leaders—He is a young, tech-savvy, black Republican in a party that isn’t exactly filled with other candidates who meet those descriptions.
Jones is an Iraq war veteran and a former Air Force intelligence officer. She would be the first Filipina-American elected to Congress, and the first lesbian to represent the 23rd district.
Hurd performed well in polls leading up to Election Day, and he gave his party fewer headaches than a number of other Republican candidates in comparatively safer districts. During a visit in September he projected confidence, telling me on his campaign bus that backlash from President Donald Trump’s unpopular decisions wouldn’t sink him this cycle, because voters are familiar with him and his policy positions. “That’s why when it comes to this election, I’m not concerned, because people know where I stand on these things,” he said.
And in his rural, Hispanic-heavy district, Hurd knows which battles to pick. After Trump said he would end the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Program, Hurd introduced a bipartisan immigration reform bill in the House and later teamed up with like-minded colleagues from both parties to pressure GOP leaders to hold an ultimately unsuccessful vote on the matter.
He also differs with the president and sometimes his party on other matters. Hurd made headlines over the summer when he penned an op-ed in the New York Times criticizing Trump for siding with Russian President Vladimir Putin over the U.S. Intelligence community on questions of Russian interference in the 2016 election during a joint press conference in Helsinki. And he voted against House Speaker Paul Ryan’s health care bill that would have repealed much of Obamacare, as the legislation would have hurt many of his rural constituents.
Hurd enjoys support among local officials of both parties, such as Eagle Pass mayor Ramsey English Cantu, a Democrat, who campaigned for the congressman in September.
“Take it from this Democrat that we have excellent representation in Washington. And Will Hurd and I know that we’ll continue to have that,” Cantu said at the time.
