MONDAY 5 AUGUST 2019Will lack of diversity come back
and bite Republicans?
Will Hurd, the lone black GOP member in the House, is retiring (Reuters)
CHRIS STEVENSON
The announcement from congressman Will Hurd that he will not seek re-election in his Texas district in
2020 has put some members of the Republicans in a spin.
The only black GOP congress member in the House of Representatives, Hurd is the latest in a string of
retirements that will make Republican attempts to take back the house from Democrat control next year
much harder. The former CIA officer’s 23rd district is almost in perpetual motion politically and is one of
the biggest in the country, spanning from San Antonio to near El Paso and including hundreds of miles of
the border with Mexico. It is almost 70 per cent Latino, and Hillary Clinton won it by about 3.5 percentage
points in 2016.
Last year’s midterm elections left Hurd as one of just three house Republicans to sit in a district carried by
Clinton, not President Trump. Hurd did not win by much in 2018, gaining a second term by just under